INTERNAL HISTORY 



GERMAN PROTESTANTISM 



THE MIDDLE OF LAST CENTURY. 



/ 



BY CH. FRED. AUG. KAHNIS, D.D., 

PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 
BY THE 

KEY. THEODORE MEYER, 

HEBREW TUTOR IN THE NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH. 



EDINBURGH : 
T. & T. CLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET. 

LONDON : HAMILTON & CO. DUBLIN : J. ROBERTSON, HODGES 
AND SMITH, PHILADELPHIA : SMITH & ENGLISH. 



MDCCCLVI. 



^r 



^V 



MURRAY AND GIBB, PRINTERS. EDINBURGH. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



In laying Dr Kahnis' work in an English garb before the 
public, I feel that I have much cause to crave the reader's 
forbearance and indulgence, as regards the translation. 

People in this country often complain that the transla- 
tions of German works, especially of those on philosophy, 
are in an English so barbarous, that instead of relishing 
them, they have the greatest difficulty in even under- 
standing them. But while it may be admitted, that such 
complaints are so far just, the blame, for the most part, 
ought to fall upon the authors, not upon the translators. 
The philosophical language of Germany is so entirely pecu- 
liar, is itself so dark and barbarous, that it almost defies 
translation. The translator, at all events, cannot be ex- 
pected to render in smooth and elegant, in intelligible and 
perspicuous English, an original which is destitute of 
these qualities. If, then, the translation of even entire 
philosophical works and systems be encompassed with 
very great difficulties, how much greater must these be 
in a work, which, like the present, deals so much in out- 



4 TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 

lines ? The translator has done what he could ; but no 
one is more conscious than himself of his short-comings. 

The responsibility of a translator is exhausted, or at 
least ought to be so, when he has given a faithful trans- 
lation of his original; but, whether right or wrong, he is 
more or less identified with, and charged with a re- 
sponsibility for, the work translated. As far as the 
latter is concerned, I can the less refuse to bear it, that I 
greatly encouraged the Publishers to take the translation 
of this work in hand. I did so chiefly for two reasons : — 

1. — I thought, and still think, that the present work 
will, if it do not entirely fill up, at least furnish some 
materials for filling up, a blank in our literature. It 
cannot be denied, that every where in this country there 
prevails the greatest interest for the development of 
German theology. The numerous translations of German 
theological works, — the attention which, in periodicals 
and magazines, is paid to Germany, both as to its literary 
productions, and the practical efforts put forth for re- 
claiming to the Church the large masses which are 
alienated from her, — the numerous questions put to Ger- 
man travellers, and to myself, by Christians of all 
denominations, with whom I have come in contact during 
a residence of seven years in this country. — all bear ample 
testimony to this interest. And such interest is certainly 
well deserved, not only because Germany, as the home of 
the Reformation, cannot fail to be dear to the heart of 
every Evangelical Christian, but also, and chiefly, be- 



translator's preface. 5 

cause the struggle which Christianity had to sustain in 
Germany, during the last century, was one of the noblest, 
and one which, more than any previous conflict, proves its 
Divine origin, vitality, and power! I think, moreover, 
that I am not wrong in saying, that there exists also, 
more or less consciously, a secret presentiment that, 
sooner or later, in some form or another, we shall have 
here, too, to sustain a similar struggle against similar 
foes ; and that it is this presentiment which invests the 
German battle-field with such peculiar interest for the 
British theologian and Christian. The phenomena on 
the territory of theology in Germany during the last 
century, however, do not stand isolated, but are most in- 
timately connected and bound up with the phenomena on 
the territory of philosophy, and with the political events, so 
that they can be understood only in connection with them. 
It is this circumstance which makes it so difficult for 
foreigners to get at a proper understanding and estima- 
tion of German theological productions ; and it is just 
because the present work views theology in this connection, 
that I think its appearance in an English dress will be wel- 
comed by not a few in this country. As far as I know, it is 
the first German work which has attempted such a compre- 
hensive survey of the internal history of German Protes- 
tantism during the last century. And without here enter- 
ing into details regarding the Author's position and object 
— which he himself explains in the introduction — it may 
be sufficient to mention, that the book has been received 



6 translator's preface. 

with high approbation and applause in Germany. 1 Even 
the adherents of that school whose theology the author 
designates by the term " Mediating," although they have 
objected to the Lutheran tendencies and Churchism, have 
done ample justice to the merits of the Book, and of the 
representation. 

2, Another reason which led me to believe that the 
translation of the present work might be acceptable to 
the British public, was suggested by the peculiar pheno- 
mena in the territory of British Theology. That which, 
in my opinion, constitutes the peculiar character and 
superiority of this theology, viz., its positive objective 
tendency, its being rooted and grounded in the word of 
God and the Confessions of the Reformation, is regarded 

1 The Zeitschrift fur Lutherische Theologie u. Kirche (edited 
by Rudelbach and Guericke), 1855, H. 2., S. 384, in reviewing the 
work, says, among other things : .*' This book, which is not only- 
written with a fresh vitality, energetic power, and deep interest 
and sympathy, but is also founded on the most thorough pre- 
liminary studies, honours its author as much as it does the cause 
of the Church of which he is a minister, and from the bosom and 
heart of which this testimony has sprung forth. Two things, 
especially, distinguish this work — first, the decision, which does 
not in the least derogate from and compromise the cause of the 
Lord and His Church ; and, secondly, the true impartiality, and 
the willingness, undisguised and confirmed by deed, joyfully, and 
without envy, to acknowledge all that is in any way commend- 
able. And closely connected with this is his charity in judging 
of human weaknesses, errors, and mistakes, so that the saying of 
the old Roman poet : * Homo sum, et nihil humani a me alienum 
puto? is, in a Christian manner, confirmed and purified." Com- 
pare another review, 1. c. S. 389. 



translator's preface. 7 

by many of our theologians as rather a one-sidedness, and 
is, by not a few students in theology, felt to be a fetter 
and a barrier in the way of free inquiry ; and Germany 
is, with an envious eye, looked to as the El Dorado where 
a youthful and free theology is thriving and prospering. 
When I first came to this country, German theology was 
almost a terra incognita ; and many of our leading men 
seemed to imagine that, by denouncing " German infi- 
delity," they could and would keep it out. As every one 
might have foreseen, they have failed in this. Owing 
partly to the numerous translations of German theologi- 
cal works, and partly to a spreading knowledge of the 
German language, German theology is now extensively 
studied in this country ; and during the last few years we 
have seen a school springing up which, by its bold 
assaults on our well-established creeds and systems, has 
filled faithful theologians with fear, all the more well 
founded that these enemies come in the guise of friends, 
and with the pretence of thereby bringing to us a more 
spiritual Christianity, while, by the splendour of their 
style, they fascinate and dazzle not a few youthful and 
inexperienced minds. That these views are not of home 
growth, but an importation from Germany, an attempt at 
engrafting a little Schleiermacherianism on sound British 
Theology, is a fact sufficiently known and partly admitted. 
To all who are more or less infected with these views, it 
may, it is hoped, be of some advantage to learn what the 
position really is which Sehleiermacher occupies in the de= 



8 translator's preface. 

velopment of German theology, and how little vitality that 
theology possessed. Our Author, leading us step by step 
through the varying phenomena that appeared on the terri- 
tory of German theology, from the middle of last century up 
to the present day, shows us that it was just the subjective 
tendency which caused there so much havoc, and which 
has produced all the moral and religious evils of the pre- 
sent time. But while, in Germany, the theology of 
Schleiermacher forms the turning point, and the Christian 
can well sympathize with it as a system, groping its way 
from this subjectivism to objective positive Christianity, 
as an attempt to clear the ground from the ruins with 
which that very subjectivism had covered it, and as collect- 
ing materials for the raising of a new edifice, what would 
and must be the position which the importation of this 
system would mark in British theology ? 

While thus willing to bear my share of the responsibi- 
lity for the translation of this book, I must decline to be 
throughout identified with the author. Dr Kahnis is a 
Lutheran divine, belonging to the High- Church section of 
that denomination who, in their views of the Church and 
the sacraments, come pretty near the opinions entertained 
by the Ultra High Church party in the Anglican Church, 
and who, imagining themselves to be in possession of the 
truth, speak often in rather a disparaging manner of other 
evangelical denominations, and have revived the exclusive- 
ness and fanaticism of byegone centuries against the Re- 
formed Church, Dr Kahnis' 's views on these subjects lie 



TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. V 

before us in a doctrinal monograph, * Die Lehre vom 
Abendmahl" While, in the book before us, he is strictly 
impartial in representing the facts, he sometimes allows 
his peculiar Lutheran views to come out in judging of the 
events of the last years. It would have been easy to re- 
move or alter these few passages ; but altogether apart 
from the consideration, that by so doing I should have 
misrepresented the Author, I thought that this very 
circumstance would impart additional interest to the 
book. For, in this his Lutheranizing tendency, our 
Author does not by any means stand isolated. This 
ultra-Lutheranism, on the contrary, is now in the as- 
cendant in Germany, sweeping, like a powerful tide, 
everything before it. How little soever we in this 
country may approve of these sentiments, they express 
the opinions of a large number of leading divines in 
Germany, and thus throw light upon the present reli- 
gious condition of that country. I have therefore faith- 
fully translated whatever Br Kahnis has written, only 
now and then recording my protest in a foot-note, or by 
an interspersed (!). 

In conclusion, I beg to express to the Rev. John Laing, 
Librarian in the New College, Edinburgh, my best thanks 
for the valuable assistance which I have received from 
him in this, as well as in previous translations. 

THEOD. MEYER. 

Edinburgh, November 1855. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



When, in the beginning of last year, I undertook the 
editorship of the Church and School Magazine for Saxony 
(Sachoisclies-Kirchenu. Schulblatt), it appeared to me 
that a comprehensive review of the course which the 
development of German Protestantism has taken since 
the middle of last century, would be the best method of 
effecting that which such a magazine is expected to effect, 
viz., the means of understanding the present condition of 
the Church. I have some reason to believe that the seven 
articles in which I carried out this idea have not remained 
without fruit within the immediate sphere of their desti- 
nation. In now putting them together for the benefit of 
a wider circle, no violence is done to them, inasmuch as, 
from the first, they were written with the view of forming 
a united whole. This book is, nevertheless, not a mere 
reprint of those articles. I have corrected them through- 
out, have altered many things, and added elements by no 
means unimportant. Notwithstanding these things, how- 
ever, the book in its tone and manner will still exhibit 
its origin. It is not written in the style of the Compendia. 



12 author's preface. 

This, however, I regard as its smallest defect. The time 
seems to be passed when our compendium style, with its 
abstract oracles, its epigrammatic and pointed periods, its 
exhibition of quotations and literary notices, was admired. 
"Wherever it was feasible, the schools have been charac- 
terized in the very words of their representatives. 
Whatever the book may thereby have lost in its claims 
to historical art, it has gained in objectivity. But that 
which many will not pardon, is the stand-point from 
which I judge. The fact, however, that in historical 
representations of the time reviewed by me, opinions are 
expressed, is countenanced by the example of Schlosser, 
on the territory of universal history ; by that of Erd- 
mann, on the territory of philosophy ; by that of Tholuck, 
Neander, Hagenhach, and others, on the territory of 
theology. That which is granted to these stand-points, 
a theology also, I should think, may claim, which at least 
has historical right in its favour. 

CH. FRED. AUG. KAHNIS, D.B. 

Leipzig, 28th August, 1854. 



LIST OF CONTENTS. 



Translator's Preface, 

Author's Preface, .... 

FIRST BOOK. 

The Period of Illuminism, . 

CHAPTER I.— ILLUMINISM. 

I. Modern Philosophy and Illuminism. 



Page 
3 

11 



13 



Protestantism and Modei 
Descartes, 


•n Phik 


>sophy, 




19 

22 


Spinoza . 
Leibnitz, . 








23 

25 


Wolff, 

Popular Philosophy, 

English Deism, . 








28 
29 
31 


French Deism, 








33 


Rousseau, 








34 


Voltaire, 








39 


Frederick II., 








41 


Berlin, 








44 


. Humanism. 











The Philanthropina, . . . . 46 

Utilitarianism, ..... 49 

The Classical Studies, .... 52 

Freemasonry, ..... 54 

Relation between Illuminism, Humanism, and Deism, 61 



HI. The Revolution, . . 

IV. The Inner Life of Germany at the Close of the 
18th Century. 



63 



German Literature, 


69 


Sentimentalism, . 


72 


Virtue, .... 


75 


Religion, .... 


76 


Hamann, 


80 



14 



LIST OF CONTENTS. 



Stilling", . 
Lavater, . 
Claudius, . 
Kant, 
Fichte, 



CHAPTER II.— THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUM1NISM. 

I. The Theolog-t of Transition about the Middle of 

the 13th Century, .... 96 

Pietism, . 

Bengel, 

Crusius, . 

Oetinger, 

WoW, 

School of "Wolff, 

Mosheim, . 

Ernesti, . 

Michaelis, 

Semler, 

II. The Precursors or Illuminism, 

Knuzen, .... 
Dippel, .... 

Edelmann, 

III. Bahrdt, ...... 

IV. The Wokfbnbuttel Fbagmentist and Lessing, 

The Fragments, . 

Lessing's Theses, 

Lessing and Goze, 

Lessing's Conversation with Jacobi, 

Lessing and "Mendelssohn, 

V. Jacobi's and Kant's Ixfuexce ox Theology, 

VI. Rationalism, 

Principles of Rationalism, , 

Dr Paulus, 

Its Relation to Church History, 

Its Relation to Systematic Theology, 

Its Relation to the Practice of the Church, 



VII. SUPERNATUBALISM. 

Its Doctrinal Position, . 

Reinhard, 

Rational Super-naturalism, 



186 

187 
189 



LIST OF CONTENTS. 



15 



SECOND BOOK. 
CHAPTER I.— THE RENOVATION. 

I. The Speculative School Proceeding from Fichte. 

Schelling, ..... 

Hegel, 

General Influence of the Speculative School, . 

II. The School Based on the Immediate Life of the 

Individual. 

Romantic School, .... 

Schleiermacher, .... 



Page 
193 
196 

200 



201 
204 



III. The Renovation during and after the Libera- 
tion-Wars. 

Fichte and Pestalozzi, .... 215 

The Liberation- Wars, .... 218 

The Moral Renovation, .... 219 

The Historical. Renovation, . . . 220 

The Religious Renovation, . . . 222 

Harms' Theses, ..... 223 

Beginnings of the Prussian Union, . . 226 

CHAPTER II.— THE MEDIATION THEOLOGY. 

I. General Character of the Theology of this time, 229 

De Wecte's Tendency, .... 231 

Hase's Tendency, .... 236 

Hase's Struggle with Rationalism, . . 238 

II. The Influence of Schleiermacher and Hegel upon 

Theology, ..... 241 

Schleiermacher in Berlin, . . . 241 

Hegel in Heidelberg, .... 243 

Daub, . . . . . 243 

Hegel in Berlin, ..... 245 

Marheinicke, . ... . . 247 

Hinrichs, ...... 247 

Positive Hegelianism, ... . . 248 

Negative Hegelianism— Strauss, Bauer, Feuerbach, 249 

The Philosophical School going beyond Hegel, 252 

Schelling, ..... 253 

Present Position of Philosophy, . . 254 
Schleiermacher's System of the Doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, . . . . . 255 

Schleiermacher's relation to Philosophy, . 256 

III. The so-called German Theology, 

Twesten and Nitzsch, . . . . 257 

Ullmann, ...... 258 

Christology, ..... 259 



16 



LIST OF CONTENTS. 



Rothe, .... 
Lange, .... 
General Character of this Theology, 

CHAPTER III.— THE CHURCH RENOVATING 
HERSELF. 

I. The Union Introduced and Carried. 

The Introduction of the Union in Nassau, Roden, 

Rhenish Bavaria, , 

Frederick William III. and the Union, 
David Schulz and Scheibel, 
Steffens, . 
The Liturgy, 
Hahn and Olshausen, 
The Prussian Lutherans, 
The Theology of the Union, 



Page 
260 
260 
261 



II. The Theology of the New Life, 

Tholuck, .... 

Neander, 

Hengstenberg, . 

III. The Practical Efforts of the New Life, , 

Mission, . . . . . 

The Moral and Religious Condition of the Present, 

The Inner Mission, .... 

The Cure of Souls, .... 

The Constitution of the Church, 

Public Worship, .... 

The Pulpit, 

The Movements of the Roman Church, 
Ecclesiastical Liberalism and the Union, in their 
influence on the development of Church Feeling, 

IY. The Confessional Theology, 

Its Principle, 
Exposition of Scripture, 
Doctrinal Theology, 
Church History, 
Position of the Lutheran Church towards the Roman 
and other Protestant Churches, 



262 
263 
263 
266 
267 
268 
269 
270 

271 

271 
273 
274 

276 

276 

281 
290 
295 
297 
302 
304 
306 

309 
311 

311 
316 
320 
326 

327 



FIRST BOOK. 



It is not a history of the Protestant Church of Germany 
since the middle of the last century which the following 
pages pretend to offer, but a survey of the systems and 
tendencies which, since that period, have agitated Pro- 
testantism, that thus we may be enabled to understand 
the history of the present. 

A threefold prejudice stands in the way of such a 
history : First. That we are thereby led from the fresh 
blooming territory of life into the dark misty land of 
abstractions. Secondly, That by the confusion occasioned 
by the crossing and opposition of the various systems, we 
are distracted rather than edified. Thirdly. That as 
regards a comprehensive view of the whole, the reader 
is too much at the mercy of the stand-point of the author. 

It is true that such a history of systems and tendencies 
leads into the world of thoughts. In no age, however, 
have thoughts ventured farther ouc into life than in the 
second half of the eighteenth century, where philosophy 
sought to rule over both State and Church. 

It is true, also, that it is precisely in this period that 
these thoughts come more into contact and conflict with 

B 



18 FIRST BOOK. 

each other ; but the task which this book proposes to 
itself is, in substance, to point out their internal unity. 
This, however, we state with the conviction that our 
ability falls very far short of the ideal which we ourselves 
entertain of such a task. 

It is farther true that the author views this movement 
from a stand-point which is not common to all. But, on 
the other hand, no true history has hitherto been ob- 
tained without forming a judgment. All that can be 
demanded is, that the opinion should not break in upon 
the phenomena like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, but 
should be able to point out, and bring to light the judg- 
ment which, from within, is passed upon the systems ; that 
the last word which the author may have to speak should 
not be in strict opposition to the whole movement, but 
should be able to vindicate itself just by the movement. 

It would be moving in a circle, if the author were here 
to state the reasons which have induced him to divide the 
period here to be traversed into two, which, as far as 
systems can be circumscribed by numbers, have, for their 
boundary, the end of the eighteenth century. The second 
half of the eighteenth century is to him the period of 
Illuminism ; l the first half of the nineteenth century the 
period of Renovation. Of the former we shall treat in 
this First Book : the Second Book will embrace the latter. 

1 The German word is Aufklarung, which means " clearing-up, 
illumination, enlightenment/' It has not in itself a bad mean- 
ing, but is so used by all parties — although, of course, in a 
different sense. The context must decide the exact meaning to 
be attached to it. Our author designates thereby opposition 
to the mysteries of faith, and to all truth revealed from without. 
By its derivation from the adjective Mar. i.e. clear, the word 
reminds us, moreover, of the leading- principle of all these 
schools and systems : Wahr ist, was hlar ist, i.e. true is all that 
which is clear, i.e. which agrees with man's natural sense for 
truth — with common sense. — Tr. 



CHAPTER I. 



ILLUMES'ISM. 



It is scarcely possible to understand an age which under- 
took to determine all the forms and institutions of life by 
the pure idea, to explain all of them from it, without 
viewing, carefully and minutely, the course of philosophy, 
— that science which has, from of old, considered herself 
as queen in the domain of thoughts. 

Proceeding from the fundamental view that philosophy 
is the scientific self-consciousness of an age, modern 
philosophy, of which Descartes is usually considered the 
father, has been declared to be the philosophy of Pro- 
testantism. That which, in the Reformation, was carried 
out on the territory of religion, was, as is generally af- 
firmed, accomplished, since Descartes, on the domain of 
philosophy. It is true that, at first sight, this view is con- 
tradicted by the circumstance that Descartes was a zealous 
Roman Catholic, who even made a pilgrimage to Loretto ; 
that Spinoza was a Jew ; and that Leibnitz exerted 
himself, with all his might, for a final union of the 
separated individual churches. By such outward facts, 
however, a matter so purely internal in its character, can- 
not be determined, and this all the more, because to these 
external facts others may be opposed : such as, that the 
writings of Descartes were put into the Index; Spinoza 
was compelled to leave the Synagogue : and Leibnitz, 
after all, belonged by birth to the Protestant Church. 
It is argued, that as Protestantism, proceeding from sub- 
jective faith, broke through the authority and tradition 
of the Church of the Middle Ages, so the father of modern 



20 ELLUMTNTSM. 

philosophy proceeded from doubting all truth handed 
down by tradition ; — as Protestantism developed all its 
doctrines from subjective faith, so the father of modern 
philosophy acquired and formed the sum and substance of 
his knowledge from self-consciousness. But this dazzling 
combination rests on an assertion as unphilosophical as 
it is unhistorical. Protestantism is a religious, a Christian, 
and an ecclesiastical stage of development ; but being such, 
it demands that it shall be measured by the law of its 
own territory of life. He, however, who affirms that Pro- 
testantism, with its doctrine of the subjective faith, broke 
through the tradition of the Church of the Middle Ages, 
confounds Protestantism with a caricature of the Refor- 
mation — with fanaticism. Protestantism has assailed the 
authority of the Mediaeval Church with an authority, the 
decisive weight of which the latter herself acknowledged, 
viz., with Scripture. According to the principle of Pro- 
testantism, it is not that which agrees with the subjective 
faith, but that which is in accordance with Scripture, 
which is true. It is not consistent with truth to fasten 
upon the Reformers who assailed, with the strongest 
weapons, a spirit destructive of the word of Scripture and 
of the right of what is historical, and who, acquainted as 
they were with the old philosophy and with scholasticism, 
denied to reason any right whatsoever to judge in matters 
of faith ; — it is not consistent with truth to fasten upon 
them the inference that the truth of their standing-point 
was self- consciousness, — that self - consciousness which 
pulls down a world in order to rebuild it out of itself. 

Another question is, Whether the character of modern 
philosophy does not stand in vital connection with the 
essence of Protestantism ? In opposition to the Jewish 
kings, who made flesh their arm ; in opposition to the 
priests, who performed works which were merely external, 



PROTESTANTISM AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 21 

— the prophets of the Old Testament insisted upon the 
right disposition of mind, and upon the proper manifesta- 
tion of it in the life ; and from this spiritual point of view 
they prophetically saw a time when the Lord would write 
the law in the heart. They thus set loose a subjective 
spirit, proceeding from the wants of the person, and which 
then showed itself even in those systems which confounded 
the human with the divine ; such as that of the Pharisees, 
who certainly, first of all, strove after the justification of 
the individual by the law. But who, for all that, would 
claim a prophetical tendency for the Pharisees ? Thus, 
it could not be otherwise than that the spirit of inquiry 
which the Reformers claimed in the territory of faith, 
should be naturally followed by a spirit of inquiry, of 
criticism, of reflection, on the territory of the pureiv 
human life. It is indeed a very ingenious supposition on 
the part of Shakespeare, that Hamlet, that man of reflec- 
tion, studied in Wittenberg. Up to the period of the 
Thirty Years' War, religion was the chief moving power 
of the time. The question regarding the Confession pre- 
vailed over everything ; and even secular questions, in 
order that they might excite interest and be carried, were 
compelled to clothe themselves in the garb of religion. 
But the result of the Thirty Years' War was indifference, 
not only to the Confession, but to religion in general. 
Ever since that period, secular interests decidedly occupy 
the fore-ground, and the leading power in Europe is 
France. The change of the times is characterised, in a 
high degree, by Christina of Sweden, the daughter of that 
heroic king of the Lutheran Church. Possessed of a 
nature purely and entirely reflective, disquieted, capri- 
cious, hastening from one intellectual enjoyment to an- 
other, she soon became unsettled in her Protestant faith. 
It was too dry and serious for her. Led by the ancients. 



22 ELLUMENISM. 

she soon abandoned herself to a deistical Rationalism. 
But the reflecting Ego which had made this faith, felt 
itself also to have the mastery over everything which it 
had assigned to it. and she fell into an unbounded Scep- 
ticism. Against that, the learned Humanists, whom she 
assembled at her court, had no remedy. The Ego. freed 
from all fetters, but unable to bear itself, demanded an 
absolute authority ; and such the cunning fathers of the 
Society of Jesus pointed out to her as to be foimd in 
Rome. But this authority, too. was one of her own 
making ; the celebrated pervert stood, by her irony, above 
even Rome and its anointed. It was at the court of this 
individual, thoroughly modern, that Descartes closed his 
life. The unsteadiness which pervades Christina's life, 
pervades his also, which was violently tossed between the 
solitude of study and the noisy life of the world. Doubt, 
the fruit of this unsteadiness, is the starting-point of his 
philosophy. 

The Ego which doubts of everything, cannot doubt 
that it is doubting ; to doubt is to think. Everything the 
thinking Ego may cast out of himself, except thinking 
itself. Thinking is its real being ; the Ego exists only 
because and while it thinks ; I think — therefore. I am 
{cogito. ergo sum). Self-consciousness is thus the firm 
point on which the doubt, as to whether man be able to 
comprehend the truth, is broken. In the consciousness 
of self there is implied, as an innate idea, the conscious- 
ness of God. The idea of an infinite being cannot be the 
product of one who is finite ; it is from the infinite mind 
only that it can have come into the finite. The idea of 
God necessarily supposes the existence of God, and neces- 
sarily implies it. It is thus in the divine substance that 
the thinking Ego possesses the absolute substance of truth : 
the world stands without this thinking Ego. Whatever 



DESCARTES, SPIXOZA. 23 

we perceive in the world may be resolved into the two 
substances of extension and of thought. In these three 
substances the sum of all existence is comprehended. But 
is this sum sure and certain ? His own self-consciousness 
alone is absolutely sure to the Ego ; and this is certain to 
him. because it is in it that thought and being are com- 
prehended in immediate unity. If, then, that be certain 
to the Ego which immediately corresponds to him, — what 
is clear or obvious to him, — the thinking Ego has the 
measure of truth in clearness. 1 The Ego which went out 
from absolute doubt returns into the objective world easy 
and comforted, in the conviction that the God whose idea 
is given immediately in the self-consciousness, could not 
have given to men organs of untruth : that vjhich is clear 
or obvious to him will he true. 

It is within this sphere of thought that Spinoza consist- 
ently takes his stand. In common with Descartes, he 
held the formal principle of clearness, and the method of 
that science which proves with absolute evidence, i.e. 
Mathematics. But it appeared to him to be inconsistent 
to allow two finite substances to stand beside the absolute 
substance. There is only one substance, viz., God. While 
Descartes, however, in the sense of the creed of the Church, 
explained the absolute substance, as the Infinite Spirit, the 
Creator of heaven and earth, Spinoza defined it in a manner 
purely philosophical, as a being which does not, for its exist- 
ence, require any other being, and is hence the ground of 

1 De Meihodo : Sum certus me esse rem eogitantem. Num- 
quid ergo etiarn scio, quid requiratur, lit de aliqua re sim cer- 
tus ? Xempe in hac prima eogitatione nihil aliud est quam clara 
quaedam et distincta perceptio ejus quod afnrmo, quae sane non 
sufiieeret ad me certum de rei veritate reddendum, si posset 
unquam contingere. ut aliquid quod ita clare et distincte perci- 
perem fabum esset, ac provinde jam videor pro regula generali 
statuere. illud omne esse verum quod clare et distincte percipio. 



24 ILLUMIXl^M. 

himself, is absolute self-affirmation, the immanent cause of 
all phenomena. The God of Spinoza is nothing but this 
abstract infinite existence, this infinite space, which is in- 
different towards the finite forms which arise and vanish 
in it, this ocean, on which the waves rise and fall. All 
those definitions which assign to him spirit, personality, will, 
etc., do so in appearance only — (See Erdmann. Vermischte 
Aufsatze, S. 124, ff.) The substance is the negation of 
ail finite phenomena (modi), and yet exists only by making 
them proceed out of itself. All phenomena are resolved 
into the two last fundamental notions — extension and 
thought. These are the attributes of the substance, i.e. 
that which our understanding perceives as constituting 
and determining its substance. The phenomena (modi) 
are comprehended by the perception of the senses (imagina- 
tion) ; the attributes are products of the understanding, 
and these are the Infinite which the understanding pro- 
duces in the way of abstraction ; the substance is for the 
reason, striving after the Infinite and one. That is the high- 
est ; after that man ought to strive ; he ought not to follow 
those thoughts of God which are subjectively made (con- 
fused), but the objective thoughts of God ; and that which 
he beholds, he ought to receive with love, as a manifesta- 
tion of the Infinite (amor intellectualis) . With such views 
Spinoza was compelled to leave the Synagogue, without 
being able to join the Christian Church. The logical calm- 
ness and consistency which pervade his ethics, pervade his 
life also. He has, for modern time, become the represen- 
tative of Pantheism ; and thus it is that many have forced 
upon him other forms of it. The unity of God which he 
proclaimed was, however, not an absorption into the life 
of the universe, an absorption still full of life, according to 
Eastern theory ; nor was it a mystical absorption of self 
into the love of God, according to the views held and acted 



LEIBNITZ. 25 

upon in the middle ages ; but it was the logical surrender 
to the logically apprehended nature of the universe. This 
dissolution of all life into logical thoughts is, in the Trac- 
tatus tJieologico-politiciis, exercised in the spheres of theo- 
logy and politics. It is there that this whole philosophy 
is seen as an important link in the chain of those intel- 
lectual systems and tendencies which issued in Illumin- 
ism. When, therefore, German philosophy again revived 
the pantheistic spirit of Spinoza, Illuminism willingly 
offered its hand ; its precursor also was Spinoza. (See 
Eeichlin Meldegg, Br H, G. E. G. Paulus, I. S. 227). 

Spinoza — so Leibnitz said — would be right if there 
were no monads. The universe consists of numberless 
monads. They are atoms determining themselves, spon- 
taneous powers, independent individual existences. What- 
ever exists, from the particle of dust up to God, is a monad. 
But while every monad is essentially an individual exist- 
ence determining itself, yet it stands, at the same time, in a 
relation to the universe by that notion of the universe which 
it carries within itself. But this notion of the universe 
does not imply that they are determined from without — 
the monads, says Leibnitz, have no windows ; but they are 
brought into a relation to the universe from within. If, 
then, the nature of every monad consists in self-determina- 
tion, it follows that the degree of this self-determination 
decides the position which it occupies in the universe. 
God, the absolute monad, is absolute self-determination. 
With the degree of self-determination coincides the degree 
of the notion of the universe. Where life still slumbers 
in a stupor, as in the stone, there the notion of the uni- 
verse also is confused, i.e., without any distinguishing of 
particulars. The more perfect the life, the more distinct 
the notion of the universe. In man, the body is a conglo- 
meration of monads, which the monad of the soul keeps to- 



26 ILLUMDsISM. 

gether, as a swarm of bees is kept by the queen bee. The 
monad of the human soul is mind, and the fundamental 
powers of the mind are knowledge and volition. Man is 
free in his volition, in so far as he is not determined from 
without, and by caprice, but by rational considerations. 
These rational considerations, however, are nothing else 
but the dispositions of will, which were, from the beginning, 
implanted in man. Hence, not only the functions of the 
body, but also those of the soul, are the mechanical mani- 
festations of dispositions which were put into him from 
without, just as are the movements of an automaton. That 
power which determines every thing is thus the predes- 
tined order, according to which all single monads act upon, 
and fit into one another, in a harmonious manner — the 
pre-established harmony. That — as once Leibnitz himself 
said — is the deity of his system. Although he himself ac- 
knowledges the God of the Christian faith, yet his system 
assigned to Him a very uncertain position only. (See Erd- 
mann, Geschichte der neuern Philosophies II. 2 S. 55, ff.) — 
The individuality of its author gave great strength and 
authority to this view of the universe. The life and views 
of Descartes bear the same character of disunion between 
faith and knowledge as we find, before him, with his coun- 
trymen Montaigne and Charron, and, after him, in the 
whole extent of its untruth, in Bayle. The cause of this 
certainly did not lie in the time only, but also in the 
romantic manner in which the objective forms of life were, 
in a mechanical way only, united with the personal life. 
Leibnitz, the German thinker, was, throughout, a positive 
character. The secret of the immense knowledge which 
this powerful spirit possessed must be found, apart from 
his wonderful natural gifts, in the astonishing and almost 
child-like manner with which he could surrender himself 
to the thoughts of others. " No one" — so he says of him- 



LEIBNITZ. 27 

self — "is less of a critic than I myself am. It is singular 
that I approve of most of what I read, Conscious how 
differently things may be viewed, I find, in reading, always 
that which excuses or defends the authors. My disposi- 
tion is, after all, such, that in the writings of others I seek 
more my own profit than to discover anything to their 
disadvantage." Such a man, who, to mathematicians, 
natural philosophers, philologists, historians, and theolo- 
gians, proved himself to be a master in their respective 
branches of knowledge, — such a man was required, in order 
to secure confidence to the claim of philosophy to be the 
mistress of all sciences. A man with this astonishing eye 
for all the objects of science, — with this sense of what is 
true in every sphere, could not, like Spinoza, throw the 
forms of the universe into the logical abyss of the sub- 
stance. As, in his universe, all the contrasts are resolved 
into harmony, so he aimed at a philosophical view in which 
all the historical forms of philosophy find their true position 
(see Feuerbacli, Darstellung cler Leibnitzischen Phil., S. 24, 
ff.), — at a reconciliation between philosophy and Christi- 
anity, in opposition to the sceptical dualism of Bayle (against 
whom he wrote his Theoclicea) and others, — yea, even at a 
reconciliation of the separated individual churches. It is 
true that he has not overcome the mechanism which Des- 
cartes, especially, had introduced; and the dismember- 
ment of the univerbe into monads, is a significant omen 
of the atomizing tendency of the age of Illuminism (see 
Erdmann, Die Deutsche Speculation seit Kant, I. S. 22). 
Like Descartes and Spinoza, he, too, saw in clearness 
the measure for truth. He gave a more distinct shape to 
the principle of clearness, by dividing it into the principles 
of contradiction, and of the sufficient reason. The true 
is, in the first instance, that which does not contradict 
itself ; and, secondly, that for which a sufficient reason can 



28 ILLOflXI-M. 

be adduced. The first principle 

V) proves the possibility: the second (jm 
rath ■ . the reality. 

The principle of clearness thus established became the 
point of gravitation, and the centre of the philosopl 

't: had been prevented from systematically 
bringing out his views. This was the task which Wolff 
proposed to himself: and he has accomplished it with such 
an energy of distinctness, and with such consistency in 
execution of it. as deserve, at all events, to be acknow- 
ledged by us. In harmony with these two principles oi 
truth, he divides all the territories of philosophical know- 
ledge into two parts — the theoretical, and the practical. 
The former developes that which reason teaches, according 
to the principle of what is possible ; the latter, that which 
experience shows to be real. That which, e.g.. reason 
knows of God belongs to natural theology : but the I. 
as Wolff modestly confesses, requires to be 
by revelation, which belongs to experience. Thus it is also 
in cosmology, psychology, etc. In o w, although Wc 
its due weight to what : ; - i bed by experience, y ; 

cannot be questioned that, in hi >P n y 3 the main 

stress rests upon the rational. Th trs especially in 

his practical philosophy. *nt cultivation and 

establishment of which he was urged on by the pra: 
tendency of his time. There is everywhere visible the 
effort to change the moral forms of life into notions of the 
understanding, and to make the o It the 

last moral impulse. Thus, his view of a family and of a 
state, is that of a contract only; and far more ostensibly 
than in Leibnitz is the principle of the monad seen in the 
effort to define all moral spheres from the standing-point 
of the individual. For 7 ; ~ his system forms 

an important crisis. The formal principle of modern 



AVOLFF, POPULAR PHILOSOPHY. 29 

philosophy since Descartes : " Clearness is the measure of 
truth." which in Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, had 
changed the objective existence into corresponding defini- 
tions of thoughts, prevails, in Wolff, over the material 
principle. For, that which Wolff seeks for in the universe 
are clear notions ; clearness devours truth. Hence the 
unmeasured applause bestowed upon this philosopher. 
At a time when Wolff had yet a great deal to say (he died 
in 1754), in the year 1738, Ludovici, in his detailed his- 
tory of the Wolffian philosophy, already counts 107 authors 
of this tendency. The method of mathematical demon- 
stration was, according to the example of Wolff, employed 
by theologians, lawyers, physicians, aestheticians, etc. 
And this philosophy not only found its way into the sphere 
of science, but into that of general education also. The 
point of attraction in it was just the clearness. The ad- 
herents of it boasted : — 

God said : the sun shall be, 
And a world came into sight ; 

God said : let Wolfius be, 
And in all souls there was light. 

But Wolff survived his fame. His heirs were the so-called 
Popular Philosophers among whom Beimarus, Moses 
Mendelssohn, Garve, Sulzer, Platner, Nicolai, and others, 
are sufficiently known. What is common to all these 
philosophers, is the effort to make philosophy a matter of 
good education. They therefore abandoned the heavy 
mathematical method, and philosophized in the tone of 
educated conversation. The criterion of truth is, accord- 
ing to them, sound common sense. " The only business 
which I assign to my speculation," — so says Mendelssohn 
in his last work — " is merely to rectify the utterances of 
sound coQimon sense, and to change them, as much as is 
possible, into rational knowledge." It forms part of 



30 ILLUMINISM. 

sound common sense to strive after virtue, to believe in 
God, to hope in a life after death ; and to afford a philo- 
sophical foundation for these convictions of sound common 
sense, was what the popular philosophers were aiming at. 
Mendelssohn proved the existence of God in his Morgen- 
stunden ; the immortality of the soul in his Phaedon. 
The manner in which he led this proof was based upon 
the principle of clearness, in that form which Leibnitz had 
given to it. There is a God, because the idea of God not 
only has nothing contradictory, but has even sufficient 
reasons of reality. Such a philosophy was accessible to 
the educated world, and they willingly received it. The 
formal principle of modern philosophy : " Clearness is the 
rule and criterion of truth," has, by the Popular Philo- 
sophy, been implanted in the conviction of the educated 
of the age. The nature and essence of Illuminism consists 
simply in making clearness the criterion of truth. 

This definition, however, requires to be supplemented. 
Clearness is a merely formal notion. What was it which 
was clear to the Popular Philosophy ? That which corre- 
sponded to common sense. Common sense was, to the 
philosophers of this school, the innate, natural sense of 
truth. This natural sense they opposed to the artificial 
systems of science, and to the positive forms of life in 
religion, state, law, etc. In these there is much error ; 
but not in common sense. Common sense contains, so 
to speak, a sunk capital of fixed truth with which God 
has endowed mankind. This natural sense of truth must 
of necessity contain the natural root of truth, even as 
regards all the forms of life. And it is thus, that with the 
formal principles of Illuminism: "Clearness is the criterion 
of truth," there is connected the material principle : " In 
all the forms of life it is the natural foundation which is 
clear, and, tlierefore, true" Wolff had admitted it to be 



ENGLISH DEISM. 31 

rational to acknowledge a revelation ; the Popular Philo- 
sophers, according to the principle which we have brought 
out, recognised, in all positive religions, only the natural 
foundation to be true. They were Deists. In order to 
understand this, we must take a retrospective glance at 
the development of Illuminism in England and France. 

As the master of modern philosophy in England, Bacon 
stands out. In harmony with the practical character of 
his nation, Bacon turned his eye to the world of pheno- 
mena. To understand the reality, and that by means 
of critical observation, is the task of philosophy. The 
critical, experimental, and practical spirit which he asserted 
and maintained, advanced in Locke to that position which 
considers the human mind as an empty form which 
receives all which it contains by means of perception by 
the senses (Nihil est in intellectu quod non ante fuerit in 
sensu), until Hume denied generality and necessity to ideas, 
so that in the world of mind there remained subjective 
combinations only; and in the moral world changeable 
principles only. In agreement with the Popular Philo- 
sophers of Germany, the Scottish philosophers maintained, 
in opposition to Hume, the generality of moral conscious- 
ness as the firm ground of all truth. Bacon stood on the 
ground of the doctrine of the Church : but the experi- 
mental method which he impressed upon English science 
has contributed to mature Deism. 1 Locke's religious stand- 
point resembles that of our so-called Rational Supernatural- 
ism, viz., that Christianity is the supernatural revelation 
of natural truths. With such a view Deism stood in 
closest connection ; just as our German or rational Super- 
naturalists also, themselves, to a large extent, went over to 
Rationalism (Ammori, Bretschneider, Schott, Tzschirner). 

1 See Lechler, Geschichte des Enylischen Deismus, S. 25. 



32 ILLUMIXISM. 

Hume himself was a Deist. By Deism we understand 
" The elevation of natural religion to be the standard and 
rule of all positive religion, — an elevation which is sup- 
ported by free examination by means of thinking." 1 
Herbert of Cherbury, Hobbes, Toland, Tindal, Chubb, 
Shaftesbury, and others, are the heads of this school, which 
attained its height at the end of the seventeenth, and 
beginning of the eighteenth century. The principal tenets 
of English Deism are the following : — Christianity is a 
positive religion, like Judaism and Mahomedanism. It 
is a prejudice which the Christians have in common with 
the Jews and Mahomedans, to imagine that their religion 
is the only true one. That which separates these religions 
is the positive, but that is merely the unessential — the 
shell. In the main point, all positive religions are at one. 
This main point is natural religion — the religion of sound 
common sense. The foundation of natural religion is the 
moral consciousness. It is on it that the belief in a higher 
Being, and the hope of immortality, are based. This 
natural religion was the original religion ; and Christianity 
is, in its essence, nothing but the restored original religion. 
Whatever in Christianity cannot be reduced to this natural 
religion, is either unessential or fabulous." 

It is not possible to deny to English Deism a certain 
moral and religious earnestness. When Herbert of Cher- 
bury, the first Deist of note, had finished his book, " De 
veritate prout distingidtur a revelatione etc." (1624), he 
was full of doubts as to whether its publication would 
promote the glory of God. " Thus filled with doubts, I 
was, on a bright summer day, sitting in my room ; my 
window to the south was open ; the sun shone brightly ; 
not a breeze was stirring. I took my book On Truth into 

1 See Lechler, S. 490. 



FRENCH DEISM. 33 

my hand, threw myself on m} 7 knees, and prayed de- 
voutly in these words, i thou one God, thou Author 
of this light which now shines upon me, thou Giver of 
all inward light, I implore thee, according to thine in- 
finite mercy, to pardon my request which is greater 
than a sinner should make. I am not sufficiently 
convinced whether I may publish this book or not. If 
its publication shall be for thy glory, I beseech thee to 
give me a sign from heaven. If not, 1 will suppress it.' 
I had scarcely finished these words, when a loud, and yet, 
at the same time, a gentle sound came from heaven, not 
like any sound on earth. This comforted me in such a 
manner, and gave me such satisfaction, that I considered 
my prayer as having been heard." Truly, one may ask, 
should God have given such a direct sign from heaven, in 
order to confirm a book which has no place for a direct 
divine revelation? Whatever may be the nature of this 
experience, might not Herbert have learnt from it that 
there exists a deep craving for signs and miracles — a craving 
which is satisfied by religion ? It is not, however, this 
which we intended to prove by this fact, but only that 
there existed among the Deists deep religious earnestness. 
In France, Deism assumed another form. The world, 
which Louis XIY. had formed around him, was a world 
of show. He who considered the state as only an 
attribute of the royal substance (Vetat c'est moi), would 
impress his royal Ego upon all the forms of this attribute. 
It was solely for the glorification of his own name that he 
patronized art and science. But the intellects soon 
enough changed their tone. When, under the regency 
and the independent reign of Louis XV., the court itself 
no longer sought the appearance of the good, the intellects 
also threw off the bonds which had hitherto kept them 
within bounds. There arose a literature productive of the 

c 



34 ILLU3IIXISM. 

dissolution of all existing things, which had its roots, not 
in the people, not in the depths of science, not in the 
creative soil of genius, but within the domains of the 
educated world. Whatever at that time was spoken in 
France, the country of society, whatever was uttered in the 
witty circles, threw itself into literature, in order that it 
might return into, and operate as an impulse in those very 
circles. While, at court, one lascivious woman after an- 
other, wielded the sceptre, women of intellect — a Tenem, 
Geoffrin, Espinasse — assembled in their drawing-rooms 
those who were remarkable for talent. In these, he was 
the hero of the day who best understood how to exercise 
his wit at the expense of the authorities in State and 
Church. In the characteristics which Rousseau, in the 
Nouvelle Heloise, gives of the life and manners of these 
societies, we read : " No disputing is here heard, no 
epigrams are made; they reason, but not in the stiff pro- 
fessorial tone ; you find fine jokes without puns, wit with 
reason, principles with freaks, sharp satire and delicate 
flattery with serious rules of morality. They speak of 
every thing in order that every one may have to say 
something, but they never exhaust the questions raised ; 
from the dread of getting tedious, they bring them forth 
only by the b} r , shorten them hastily, and never allow a 
dispute to arise. Every one informs himself, enjoys him- 
self, and departs from the others pleased. But what is it 
that is learnt from these interesting conversations? One 
learns to defend with spirit the cause of untruth, to shake 
with philosophy all the principles of virtue, to gloss over 
with fine syllogisms one's passions and prejudices, in order 
to give a modern shape to error. When any one speaks, 
it is, to a certain extent, his dress, not himself, that has 
an opinion ; and the speaker will change it as often as he 
changes his profession. Give him to-day a tie-wig, to- 



FRENCH DEISM. 35 

morrow a uniform, and after to-morrow a mitre, and you 
will hear him defend, in succession, the laws, despotism. 
and the inquisition. There is one kind of reason for the 
lawyer, another for the financier, and a third for the 
soldier. Thus, no one ever says what he thinks, but what, 
on account of his interest, he would make others believe ; 
and his zeal for truth is only a mask for selfishness." 
While with English Deists we find a certain earnestness 
for truth, a certain sincerity of conviction, — here adroit 
reasoning and wit decide the matter ; while there we find 
moral earnestness, — we here find, throughout, immorality 
and frivolity. It is true that the succeeding and last 
adherents of English Deism — we mention only Boling- 
broke — had prepared its transition to the French form of 
it ; on the other hand, French Deism was prepared in the 
school of the English. We could not conceive of Voltaire, 
Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot, without the influence of 
England. An important link in the transition is Bayle, 
who transferred the results of philosophy to the educated 
circles, and, along with these results, diffused a sceptical 
disposition, which, without directly contradicting religion, 
yet intentionally pointed out its incompatibility with 
reason and science. — The heads of French Deism are 
Rousseau and Voltaire. The former gave the programme 
of his literary activity in two prize-essays. The first of 
them establishes the proposition, that the progress of 
scientific education has always involved the decay of moral 
education. The sciences, having proceeded from immoral 
sources — astronomy from superstition, physical science 
from curiosity, morals from pride — gloss over immorality. 
The times of barbarism have always been the times of 
moral power. To this negative result the second of these 
essays, which, however, obtained not the prize, brought 
the positive, that the original, natural condition of man- 



36 ILLUMINISM. 

kind was the only true one. This thought now pervades 
all Rousseau's writings: Return to nature. By nature 
man is good. All that is bad in mankind is a deviation 
from the natural condition. It is with this proposition 
that the if Emile" that important work of Rousseau's on 
education, begins : " Every thing is good when it comes 
forth from the hand of the Creator ; every thing degene- 
rates under man's hand. In the state in which things 
now are, a man who, from the moment of his birth, would 
live among others, would, if left to himself, be most dis- 
figured. Prejudices, authority, constraint, example, all 
social institutions which now depress us, would choke 
nature in him, and nothing would be put in its stead. 
He would resemble a young tree which, growing up acci- 
dentally in a street, would soon pine away in consequence 
of the passers by pushing it from all sides, and bending 
it in all directions." Emile is intended to be the ideal of 
an education according to nature ; not for being a citizen, 
or the member of some particular class, but for being 
a man. But such an education only is natural which 
faithfully follows the hints which the nature of man itself 
gives in its development. It cannot be our task to follow 
out the stages of this development ; Raumer has done so 
in a manner which exhausts the subject (see Geschichte 
der Padagogik, II. S. 224 ff.). — The picture of this pupil, 
hardened in the manner of a savage, endowed with strong 
senses, thoroughly acquainted with his nearest neigh- 
bourhood, of clear understanding, of strong will, defying 
all obstacles, with self-confident courage — the picture of 
this pupil fell into this age thoroughly over-refined, like 
the picture of the ancient German which Tacitus held up 
to the degraded Romans. In the Nouvelle Heloise he 
represents the struggle which a heart, following the natural 
tendency to virtue, maintains with the unnatural social 



FRENCH DEISM. 37 

relations. The hero of the novel, St Preux, halts between 
the over-refined, untrue, immoral, educated world in Paris, 
and between the natural life in his native Swiss valleys, 
and the people of the ocean still in a state of nature, whom 
he seeks after having been shipwrecked in life. Too 
natural for the educated world, too educated for the 
natural world, all that he is able to do is to prescribe 
natural diets for education, domestic life, art, etc. In the 
Contrat Social^ Rousseau traces political life back to the 
social contract, according to which " the individual puts his 
person and strength, as common property, under the 
direction of the general will." The republic appears to 
him to be the only form of government in accordance with 
nature. And as he does education, society, and state, so 
Rousseau finally traces positive religion back to its natural 
root. In his Emile, he has put this natural religion into 
the mouth of the Savoy Curate. The latter judges favour- 
ably of the Gospel. How should uneducated Jews have 
been able to invent a history to which no ideal of the wise 
men of Greece approaches. Christ was He of whom Plato 
had only a presentiment. How far does Socrates stand 
behind Christ ! If the former died as a wise man, the 
latter died as God. But how prepossessing soever such 
praise, it celebrates in Christ, in reality, natural religion 
only; for it is not revelation, not miracles, not external 
commandments, which are the source of religion, but 
reason alone. And it is this latter which teaches belief in 
a personal God, in the voice of conscience, and in a recom- 
pensing Future. This deistical confession brought perse- 
cutions upon Rousseau both in France and Geneva (1762). 
Against the condemning sentence of the Archbishop of 
Paris, Beaumont^ he wrote a circular letter, in which, with 
all the brilliancy of his style, he advocates the right of 
natural religion, and proposes a great union of religions 



38 ILLOIIXISM. 

on the ground of Naturalism. To bis countrymen he 

addressed the famous Letters Mountain, the first 

of which treated the same subject with great skill. After 
Rousseau had thus laid open the natural condition of every 
thing, he exhibited himself in his true character to the 
world, in his Cc n fessions. The life of a man who. at the age 
of seven years, read novels with his father, day and night. — 
who in his sixteenth year apostatised to the Roman Catholic 
Church, in order afterwards to return to the Reformed. — 
who. when still a youth,, lived upon the favour of a woman 
of doubtful character, — who. in Venice, enjoyed the sensual 
pleasures of Italy. — who cohabited with a common woman 
(Le Vdsseur) without the benediction of the Church, and 
without love, merely for the sake of sexual wants, and 
gave up to the foundling hospital the fruits of this alliance. 
■ — who held the world to be perfect every where whereso- 
ever man does not come with his troubles, and who at last 
ended his misanthropic existence by poison (at least, 
according to the highest probability 1 ). — such a man is not 
a proof of the doctrine of the natural goodness of the 
human heart. As a man. born in Switzerland, and grown 
up under natural relations, and rilled with recollections of 
the republican simplicity of his native place. Rousseau 
rightly felt that all relations, especially in France, were 
caricatured ; but his gospel of natural religion was no- 
thing else than the hiatus ille of the usurer Althis. in 
Horace. His nature was an abstraction which fed upon 
the world of education; just as he himself could not do 
without the educated circles, the unnaturalness of which 
he described with all the declamatory skill of his time ; and 
he would have pined away, if the world which he described 
and praised, had become a reality. But he is one of the 

1 The proofs of it are given by Raumer in the Ev. Kirchen- 
Zeihmg. 1846, No. 88. 



FRENCH DEISM. 39 

most characteristic representatives of the tendency of 
Illuministii. which, actuated by a natural sense of truth, 
would return to nature in all the relations of life. 

More at home in the educated circles of France was 
Voltaire, the man of his century. He calls himself a 
Deist, and he knows well how most favourably to exhibit 
his Deism, by all the means of his brilliant style : " Wor- 
shippers of one God, friends of men, forbearing with the 
superstition which we reject, — we honour every society, 
do violence to no sect ; we never speak with mockery or 
contempt of Jesus, who is called Christ. On the con- 
trary, we consider him as a man distinguished by his 
zeal, by his virtue, by his love to his brethren. We 
lament over him as a reformer, perhaps somewhat too 
inconsiderate, who became the victim of his fanatical 
persecutors. We worship in him a Jewish Deist, just as 
we praise Socrates, who was an Athenian Deist." This 
assurance of his worshipping God, and of his high esteem 
for Christ, is perhaps equivalent to the conduct of many 
of our constitutionalists, who, while they disparage all 
the manifestations of kingly authority, and seek, if pos- 
sible, to destroy all its influence, yet assure us that the 
person of the king is sacred in their eyes. Voltaire did 
not worship the living God in fear and love ; but he 
threw himself into ecstacies for a self-made abstraction of 
God: he in reality worshipped only his idea of God. If 
he gave to a temple the inscription — " A Dieu Voltaire/' 
what else could he thereby mean than — Free homage 
which one great spirit offers to the other ? If he assures 
us that he worshipped a Deist in Christ, he worshipped 
in Christ the notion only which he ascribed to Him. Vol- 
taire was a Deist, and not Christ. That Christ whom 
the gospels proclaim to us, he has treated with the 
utmost ridicule. In his Profession defoi des Theistes, 



40 ILLU3HNISM. 

Voltaire calls the Old Testament a book full of contra- 
dictory fables, written more than 700 years later than is 
ordinarily assumed, and more contemptible than the fables 
of the Persians and Arabs. A view which he never 
wearies of advancing again and again is, that the Biblical 
stories are borrowed from the Ancient Mythology. In 
his Epistle to the Romans (written in opposition to St 
Paul's), he says : " Where, I say, is there a single event 
in the Old or Xew Testament which is not borrowed from 
Ancient Mythology ? The sacrifice of Idomeneus — is it 
not that of Jephtha ? The cow of Ipliigenie — is it not 
the ram of Isaac ? Do you not see Eurydice in Edith, 
in the wife of Lot ? Minerva and Pegasus made water to 
spring forth from the rock ; and the same miracle is 
ascribed to Moses. Before him Bacchus had gone with 
dry feet over the Red Sea, and had made sun and moon 
to stand still before Joshua did. There is not one single 
event in the Xew Testament which you do not find in 
other writers. The nymph Amathea had the horn of 
plenty before Christ fed five thousand in the wilderness ; 
the daughters of Anius had changed water into wine and 
oil, before the marriage in Cana was heard of." The 
Apostles are spoken of in the most contemptuous manner 
by Voltaire. He charges the first Christians with worse 
things than even the heathen did : " That which put 
the new machine (i.e.. the Christian Church) in motion, 
was, community of goods, secret feasts, hidden mysteries, 
gospels which were read by the initiated only, a paradise 
for the poor, a hell for the rich, charlatanry with 
exorcisms ; such, I say, in strict accordance with truth, is 
the foundation of the Christian sect. If I deceive myself, 
or rather, if I wish to deceive, I pray the God of the 
universe to dry up my hand which writes what I am 
thinking ; to crush my head, which is convinced of the 



FRENCH DEISM. 41 

existence of this good and just God ; to tear out a heart 
which worships Him." One may judge from this, how he 
deals with the Fathers of the Church, — with the doctrines 
of the Church, — and, above all, with popes, saints, and 
priests. 

Although both were Deists, both masters of the ingeni- 
ous mode of reasoning, and of the piquant style of those 
intellectual circles, — although both were, in many ways, 
affected by the artificiality and immorality of their age, 
and harbingers of an entire dissolution, — yet Rousseau 
had too much heart, too strong a moral instinct, too great 
earnestness, to be able to rejoice in a man who, in the 
general dissolution, was building up a triumphal arch to 
his own fame. In the views of the world which were held 
both by Rousseau and Voltaire, the highest Being, which 
they allowed to remain, and the kingdom of truth and 
virtue on which He rests, formed a very feeble counter- 
action to the gravitating power of materialism. The 
latter conquered in Diderot, cVAkriibert, Hehetius, 
d'Argens, de la Jfettrie, the men of Holbach's circle, and 
others. English and French Deism met with a very 
favourable reception in Germany, — the latter chiefly in 
the higher circles, and the former rather among the edu- 
cated middle classes. The higher world was feeding 
upon the intellectual fragments of France. German 
princes considered it an honour to be introduced to those 
intellectual circles ; and the events which occurred in 
them, of which commissioned individuals (such as Baron 
Grimm) gave a report, were objects of the deepest inte- 
rest. It was considered a high privilege to read in the 
manuscript Yoltaire's infamous poem, La Pucelle d Or- 
leans, and even to be permitted to add to it. The 
English freethinkers reached Germany chiefly by means 
of translations and refutations, and took effect when those 



42 nxummsic. 

Popular Philosophers had, by means of the formal prin- 
ciple of modern philosophy, arrived at the same result. 
The head-quarters of Illuminism, both in the sense of 
French and English Deism, was Prussia, under Frederick II. 
The relation betwixt Frederick William I. and 
Frederick II. is generally known, and has exerted the 
greatest influence upon the history of the world. The 
father represents the spirit of the olden times : the son 
that of the modern. In the former we have the old faith. 
animated by the influence of Pietism, coupled with old 
German rectitude and practical ability ; in the latter the 
new faith, or rather unbelief, with French education, and 
abundance of human acuteness and wit. The assertion of 
Ranke (Neun Bucher Preussischer Geschichten III. S. 486) 
may be true, that the father would have destroyed him- 
self if he had executed his son ; but what appears to us to 
be more certain is, that Frederick's powers would have 
vanished like an ignis fattens, unless his father, by his 
education and discipline, had impressed upon him the 
moral energy of the house of Hohenzollern. The sum 
and substance of all the doctrines which Frederick 
"William L, when dying, gave to his son was, that a king 
of Prussia must always have his eye steadily fixed upon 
two objects, — the elevation of his house, and the prosper- 
ity of his subjects ; upon both of these at the same time. 
and upon nothing else {Ranke II. S. 41). The sense in 
which Frederick understood the second part, he has, as it 
appears to us, expressed most distinctly in a letter to 
Voltaire : — " My occupation consists in struggling against 
ignorance and prejudices in the provinces, of which I have, 
by the accident of birth, been made a ruler : in enlighten- 
ing the heads, civilizing the manners, and endeavoiiring 
to make people as happy as is consistent with human 
nature, and as far as the means which I can employ for 



FREDERICK II. 43 

that end will allow." It is then in IUuminism that 
Frederick placed the prosperity of his subjects ; but IUm- 
minism he placed essentially in freedom from all religious 
prejudices, i.e., from the faith of the Church. Frederick, 
like Voltaire, professed Deism ; but he himself, in a letter 
to d'Alembert, once gave expression to the idea that he 
had never lived under the same roof with religion. By 
violent measures, which even his minister, von Munch- 
hausen, ventured to oppose, he expelled the pious Hdlin 
from his position as Director of Klosterbergen, and that 
for no other reason than because the piety of that man 
was repugnant to him ; while Halm's successor, Frommann 
{i.e., pious man) thought that he could introduce himself 
to the king only under the name of Frohmann (i.e., a 
jovial man). In the instruction which Frederick gave to 
Major ton BorcJc, for the education of his nephew, he 
says : — " When my nephew shall be somewhat older, it 
will be possible to give him an abstract of the opinions of 
the philosophers, and of the various religions, without in- 
spiring him with hatred against any one of them, by 
directing his attention to the circumstance that all those 
religions worship God, but only in a different way. He 
need not have too much respect for the priest who in- 
structs him (II nefaut pas qiCilait trop de consideration 
pour le pretre qui Vinsiruit), and he must not believe any- 
thing until he has examined it." It was from this deisti- 
cal disregard of all that is positive in religion that there 
flowed his well-known principle, that in his dominions 
every one should be allowed to be saved in his own 
fashion. It is as generally known that he seized upon 
every occasion to vent his wit against ministers (whom he 
called priests or jokers), Bible texts, sacred actions, reli- 
gious hymns, etc. Frederick, however, became acquainted 
with the darker aspects of IUuminism also ; for it was 



44 ILLTJMOHSM. 

not, of course, on the religious territory only that his 
Frenchmen took liberties. The great Voltaire, to whom 
Frederick had once written, u There is only one God and 
only one Voltaire," obliged Frederick to a confession such 
as that made to Algarotti : " Voltaire has committed a 
trick which is unworthy ; he deserves to be branded on 
the Parnassus. It is indeed a pity that so worthless a 
soul is connected with so glorious a genius." Frederick 
was compelled to confess to himself that the increasing 
insubordination in his army had its foundation in the in- 
creasing unbelief ; but he confessed that to himself at a 
time when it was too late. 

Berlin was at that time the centre of Illuminism: 
Berlin and Illuminism were convertible terms. One may 
well say that this city, with its reflecting, critical, rational, 
witty tendency ; with its rash, and for that very reason, 
changeable opinions; with its pre-eminently formal 
character, was a favourable soil for Illuminism, at all 
events at that time, under Frederick II. The most pro- 
minent and open mouthed there was Xicolai, the editor 
of the Allgemeine Deutsche BibliotlieJc (General German 
Library). A bookseller, who had excelled in no single 
branch of science, sat in judgment upon all the depart- 
ments of literature, in one of its most flourishing periods ; 
a man of average intellect, without productive power, with 
the education of a dilettante, had the courage boldly to 
pass sentence against all the creations of genius which 
could not be accounted for from the sand-and fir-soil 
which he cultivated : a man of a mind wholly unphiloso- 
phical, but skilled in the use of bold and unscrupulous 
arguments, ridiculed the heroes of German philosophy. 
Against everything which had any depth whatever, he 
protested in the name of liberty of thought, and of Protes- 
tantism. a His Protestantism," says -Fic/^ of him, -was a 



BERLIN. 45 

protestation against all truth which pretended to remain 
truth ; against all that is above our senses, and against 
every religion which by faith put an end to dispute. To 
him religion was only a means of education for the head, 
in order to furnish materials for never-ceasing talk ; but 
by no means a matter of the heart and the life. His 
liberty of thinking was freedom from all that was, and is 
thought, the licentiousness of empty thinking, without 
substance and aim. Liberty of judgment was to him the 
right of every bungler and ignorant man to give his 
opinion about every thing, whether he understood it or 
not, and whether or not there was either head or tail in 
what he said." In his Sebaldus NothanJcer, Nicolai re- 
presents a travelling theologian, of the school of Illu- 
minlsm. who breaks his head against all the firm forms 
which faith everywhere as yet possesses. In the back- 
ground of this territory of brutal ecclesiastical councillors, 
of perverse adherents of Crusius, of whining Moravian 
brethren, there stands, like a protecting genius, a clear- 
thinking bookseller, — and the reader, of course, here 
thinks of no one but the writer. Besides Nicolai, the 
clergymen Spalding ', Telkr, Zollner, Librarian Biester, 
Rector Biisching, Gedicke, the Educationist, the Literati 
Sulzer, Engel, Abbt, Mendelssohn, were active in Berlin 
in the interest of Illuminism. A number of Jewish heads 
of families in Berlin, addressed, in a circular letter, the 
question to Teller, whether, on the ground of Mendels- 
sohn's Deism, they could not enter into the communion of 
the Christians ; and Teller could not but express himself 
favourably. He might as well, upon the ground of his 
Deism, have become a Jew. The secret of the com- 
munion, in which Christians and Jews knew themselves to 
be, consisted simply in their being neither Christians nor 
Jews, but men. 



46 ILLUMINISM. 

It was this at which Uluminism aimed ; as Schiller says, 
in reference to Rousseau, it enlisted Christians, for the 
purpose of transforming them into men. In the room of 
the authorities in Church and State, Illuminism put com- 
mon sense ; in the room of the positive forms of life, a 
general disposition of mind, becoming man as such, which 
is termed Humanism. This Humanism levels all family 
traditions, all differences of rank, all nationality, all posi- 
tive moral law, all positive religion, — all of them being 
only accidental numerators for the denominator of man- 
kind : what man wants in the first and last place, that is, 
to be a man. What is thereby to be understood we shall 
now see in detail. 

At the head of his Emile, Rousseau put the confession, 
that he was to represent the education of a man. In 
Germany, this principle called forth the philanthropic 
education, the master of which is Basedow, and the chief 
representatives of which are Wolke, Trapp, Salzmann, 
Campe, and others. That it was connected mthlllamin- 
ism, is sufficiently evident from the character of the master. 
He was a disciple of the Wolfenbuttel Fragmentist (Rai- 
marus), whom the school of Wolff had likewise led to 
Naturalism, and who was filled with such an instinctive 
love of controversy against the doctrine of the Church, — 
especially against the Trinity — that, in his zeal for it, he 
could forget what otherwise he did not readily forget, viz., 
his own advantage. Rousseau's Emile had given rise to 
a great stir. Even Kant, who otherwise was not very 
easily excited, gave up his regular walks, in order to study 
Emile. But now the application was concerned, and 
Basedow was just the man to raise expectations, and both 
to claim and to gain good will and able men. Thus the 
first Philanthropinum arose at Dessau (1774). After 
the foundation had been laid, Basedow did not fail to 



PHILA>sTHIlOPIXA. 47 

address, in a pompous manner, the guardians of mankind, 
for this cause of mankind. As Philanthropism agreed no 
less with the Absolutism of Russia than with the liberty 
of Switzerland, so, in the general private devotional exer- 
cises nothing should be done which would not be approved 
of by every worshipper of God, whether he were a Chris- 
tian, Jew, Mahomedan, or Deist. " In the temple of the 
Father of All, crowds of dissenting fellow-citizens will 
worship as brethren, and afterwards they will, with the 
same fraternal disposition, go, one to hear the holy mass, 
the other to pray with real brethren < Our Father,' the 
third to pray with real brethren ' Father of us' " 1 (see 
Raumer, 1. c. S. 271, ff.).— While the former education 
had viewed the minds of children as vessels into which a 
certain amount of knowledge and faith was to be infused, 
whether it was easy or difficult, Philanthropism viewed 
these vessels as the chief thing, and the amount of know- 
ledge as only secondary. In other words, knowledge was 
viewed merely as a means of training the human mind ; 
and the aim was the natural development of all man's 
powers and faculties. While the former education had 
required all which it was in the power of youths to do, 
whether it gave them pleasure or pain, the philanthropic 
education asked, in the first place, What is in accordance 
with the nature of the child? What affords him enjoy- 
ment : How do all the inclinations and dispositions of 
childhood find their suitable sphere? The delight of 
children in bodily exercise is made use of as bodily gym- 
nastics ; the inclination for play, as mental gymnastics ; 
walks, as opportunities for educating and teaching ; ambi- 

1 One of the outward distinctions betwixt the Lutheran and 
Reformed Churches in Germany is that, in the latter, the Lord's 
Prayer begins " Unser Vater" (Our Father) ; while, in the for- 
mer, it begins with u Vater unser " (Father of us). — Tr. 



48 ILLUMDSISM. 

tion, as a moral engine. But although the Philanthro- 
pina at first promised to teach every thing better and 
more quickly than the ordinary school did, yet it soon 
appeared that linguistic knowledge, and all matters of 
memory, would not thrive. Because they would not teach 
any thing from without, and mechanically, but would 
develop every thing according to nature, rational know- 
ledge, such as logic, mathematics, arithmetic, natural 
religion, and morals, as well as those sciences based upon 
perception, experience, and advantage, were there chiefly 
cultivated. The fresh youth, grown up under fine bodily 
training, simply and easily dressed in an age of wigs and 
pigtails, walked about the fields and forests to acquire a 
knowledge of nature ; went into the workshops of trades- 
men to acquire a knowledge of common life, with its arts 
and wants ; exercised themselves in the labour of the hus- 
bandman, in the art of the citizen, in order to stand a fu- 
ture like that of Robinso?i Crusoe, better than the hero of 
that book himself. It may be that, in Schiepjcnthal, espe- 
cially at first, there prevailed a simple patriarchal spirit : and 
pupils, such as the Humboldts, no doubt, speak in favour of 
Gampe's talent. And yet there very soon arose a coldness 
towards these institutions. Kant, who had at one time 
welcomed with enthusiasm the Philanthropinum at Dessau, 
soon gave a very hesitating opinion. Hantaan, despairing 
of his own talent for educating, wrote to Herder : u I 
took on one Sunday the desperate whim of packing him 
(viz., his son John Michael) up precipitately, and sending 
him to the Fontifex Maximus (Basedow), in Dessau/' 
Herder answered : " As regards the education of your 
John Michael, don't fret yourself ; nothing is gained by 
that. Have yet a little patience ; I myself come nearer 
the Fontifex Maximus in Dessau, and my boy? too, is 
growing up ; but, if it please God, he shall never see 



UHIJTABIANISM. 49 

or have him. Every thing there appears to me to be 
horrible, just like a hot -house, or rather like a stable full 
of human geese. When lately my brother-in-law. the 
forester, was here, he told me of a new method of rearing 
oak forests in ten years, to such a state as they would, by 
other means, reach only in fifty or a hundred years, viz., by 
cutting off from the young oaks the principal root under 
ground ; that then everything above the ground shot out 
into stem and branches. I think that the whole of Base- 
dow's secret consists in this ; and to him, whom I know 
personally, I would not intrust any calves, far less men, 
with a view to their being educated." Indeed, Basedow, 
who considered every one to be uneducated, was a man 
without any education. And even Frederick II., the king 
of Illuminism, who knew men better than Rousseau did, 
had no confidence in the gospel of the goodness of human 
nature, on which this whole education was based. When 
Sulzer once praised to him the fruits which this conviction 
was bearing in the schools of Silesia, he said : " my 
dear Sulzer, you don't know that d — d race." 

To form useful members or human society was the aim 
and object of the philanthropic education, and it thus 
tended essentially towards Utilitarianism. The utili- 
tarian view has, in substance, and as a matter of course, 
always been welcomed in common society ; and while the 
single individual there seeks his own advantage, he pro- 
motes at the same time the advantage of the whole. But 
the spirit of the Gospel, which teaches to seek first of all 
the kingdom of God : and the Germanic spirit, which, by 
its corporative ties, had morally elevated the industrial 
life, formed a counterpoise to the tendency and aspiration 
of the single individual to material advantage. But in 
an age which was breaking loose from all tradition, that 
counterpoise was vanishing, To the single individual, 



50 ILLUMINISM. 

who, with his individual reason, measured every thing in 
heaven and on earth, his own individual interest was, of 
course, the most natural ; and to one who views things 
with his understanding only, selfish design and advantage 
is one of the most current notions. Ever since Descartes, 
philosophy had laid the mechanical measure to all moral 
organisms of life ; but to mechanism, design is the first 
and last. If the State was viewed as a mechanism, — as a 
machine (as it was very often said), it is easily seen how 
the public advantage, the common wealth (le bien public) 
came to be looked upon as the measure of all political forms. 
Becker, in his 6i Noth-und Hilfsbuchlein" (i.e., book for 
help in distress), told the husbandman, that he in his voca- 
tion had essentially to seek the great object of mankind, of 
becoming ever wiser and better, by his being an enemy to 
all beaten tracks, and an attentive observer of all inven- 
tions for the improvement of agriculture, and in his 
striving to make the soil more and more productive. The 
model-farmer, William Thinker, understands his favour- 
ite text, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God," in such a 
manner that all his thoughts and aspirations are directed 
to the consideration of how he might arrange every thing 
in the best and most rational manner; and as a reward he 
receives on his gravestone this praise : — 

" William Thinker is here entombed. "While on earth, 

his endeavour was to improve himself and every thing. He now 

receives his reward before God's throne." 

Among the educated classes, still greater success had 
attended Campe's Robinson, of which the moral is, after 
all, only this : — Learn in thy youth as many useful things 
as possible ; you don't know how and where you may re- 
quire them. Nor did the leaders of llluminism forget 



UTILITARIANISM. 51 

their advantage. Notwithstanding all his zeal for Illu- 
minism, Nicolai always attended to his advantage as a 
bookseller. In the hands of Basedow, Bahrdt, Salis, the 
philanthropina became money speculations. And from 
practical life this utilitarian view found its way into the 
theory, Nothing in nature was so much admired as its 
adaptation to its purpose. With emotion, the wisdom of 
God was acknowledged, which gave to the poor North- 
lander the useful rein -deer, and to the lazy inhabitants of 
the South Sea, the productive bread-fruit tree. In the 
circumstance that the whole of nature is so thoroughly 
adapted to its purpose, the strongest proof for a divine 
reason was found; a whole literature gathered round 
the proof from design. (See Fortlage. Darstellung u. 
Kritik der Beweise fur das Dasein Goties [Exhibition 
and criticism of the proofs for the existence of God] 
S. 215.) In the territory of the Church, the utilitarian 
view had already been introduced by Pietism laying, as it 
did, an exclusive emphasis on practical Christianity. 
Frederick William /., in whom a military spirit, Dutch, 
economical sense, and practical Christianity were so 
strangely blended, gave, in his last days, to the court 
chaplain Sack, the instruction, " I will tell you what is 
the main point in religion : to fear God, to love Jesus, 

and to do good : all the rest is"- ; the king here made 

use of one of his cynical expressions. The theology of 
Illuminism reduced practical Christianity to intellectual 
and moral improvement. In this sense," Spalding has 
written two volumes on the Usefulness of the Ministerial 
office in the country. The main duty of the honest 
minister is to make his whole congregation wiser, more 
intelligent, and more pious, so that God may have His de- 
light in them. It is not as a model farmer, not as a col- 
lector of stones, not as a rearer of bees, not as a literatus. 



52 ILLUMINISM. 

that the minister benefits his congregation for eternity ; 
he must be its teacher, and attend to the cure of souls 
(Th. I., S. 38 ff). But soon enough voices were 
raised, asserting that with less theology, and more medi- 
cal and juridical experience, a country minister would be 
more useful. In the "Noth-imd Hilfsbilchlein" a clergy- 
man, who, by a fortunate accident, is the son of a brewer 
in town, procures better beer to his village. Frederick II. 
found the clergyman useful for getting up tables of popu- 
lation, for enforcing royal edicts, such as for the extirpa- 
tion of locusts, the stopping of post-boys on by-roads, the 
exportation of wool, etc. Forty-five such edicts were, 
even in 1802, read from the pulpit — (see Mahler, Ge- 
scltichte der Kirchenverfassung der Mark Brandenburg, 
S. 245). 

To a higher form of Humanism the classical studies led. 
The whole of the middle ages had been feeding upon the 
literary fragments of the classical world ; but the German 
nations became ripe for understanding the ancient life 
only when, after the Crusades, they gave themselves up to 
the cultivation of the purely human relations. In this 
surrender to that which is human, there was implied a 
silent protest against Rome, to which the classical educa- 
tion speedily lent expression . It has contributed to the 
accomplishment of the Reformation ; and thankfully, 
therefore, did Protestantism foster these studies in their 
schools and universities. They assumed a different form 
in different countries. Practical England drew practical 
wisdom from the ancients. The industrious Dutchman 
collected from the immense range of his reading treasures 
of learned remarks, which, it may be, he brought into cir- 
culation by a classical form. In Germany, it was only 
since the middle of last century that philological studies 
assumed a higher character. The philanthropic standing- 



CLASSICAL STUDIES. 53 

point has a certain right to exist as a reaction against the 
spiritless mode in which the ancients were studied in the 
higher schools. If they wished to maintain themselves, 
they were obliged to prove that they had life ; and that 
proof they led when the Germans approached the classi- 
cal world, with adequate strength and congenial sense. 
From the remains of antique plastic art, Winkelmann 
and Lessing opened up and deduced the understanding of 
the rules according to which ancient art produced its 
works. Klopstock's zealous Germanism awakened a taste 
for the genius of ancient languages. In Voss's hands, 
Homer spoke German. In Johannes von Midler, the 
spirit of ancient historiography was resuscitated. WielanoVs 
novels made his contemporaries to feel at home in the 
ancient world, how modern soever its appearance was. 
Goethe opened up to his contemporaries, an under- 
standing of the ancients, not only by fruitful discoveries, 
not only by single creations in the spirit of the ancients, 
but especially by being a personal representation of 
the unity of the Greek and German spirit. In the 
face of this regeneration of the ancient spirit, Wolf 
gave to classical study the form of an archaeological 
science, in the first instance in the historical sense, 
but with the conviction that in the ancient world the 
purely human appeared in its purest form, and with the 
claim of being an important power in modern life. — (See 
Bernhardy, Grundlinien zur Encyclopaedie der Philolo- 
gie,S. 17 ff). 

The victory of this classical Humanism over the 
philanthropic Humanism, was a progress ; the latter 
degraded the single individual into a simple portion in the 
fair of life, while the former taught the lesson : Devote 
yourself to all purely human relations, to the family, to 
society in the higher sense, to fatherland, to art, science. 



54 ILLTJMINISM. 

etc., in the conviction that it is only within these spheres 
that true life arises for man. This demand, however, was 
in opposition to the requirements of the Church. While 
Humanism is based on the belief in the excellence of 
human nature, the Church teaches its utter helplessness 
for salvation. While Humanism declares the purely 
human life to be the true life, Christ teaches to nee from 
the world in order to find life in Him. While Humanism 
is pleased and contented with a bright present, Chris- 
tianity teaches a pilgrimage to the heavenly Church. 
This opposition has been perceived and felt by the deeper 
humanists ; such confessions lie at the foundation of 
Goethe's Bride of Corinth, and of Schiller's Gods of Greece. 
Meanwhile, an elastic theology had attempted to build a 
bridge over the chasm. The learned quotations from the 
ancients were, in the theological text-books, taken more 
and more from the margin into the text. In ethics, too, 
even the stricter theology took a testimony from the 
ancients ; and in doctrinal theology, also, they were fond 
of proving, by quotations from the ancients, the doctrines 
of general religiousness, which were regarded more and 
more as the essentials. In the exposition of Scripture. 
Wetsiein offered rich materials to those who maintained 
the similarity of Xew Testament words to the sayings of 
the ancients. And with regard to pulpit eloquence, 
Demosthenes and Cicero were looked upon as good models. 
The theologian in whom this mixture of theology and 
classical Humanism is most characteristically exhibited, is 
Herder. 

Humanism found, neither in the Church nor in the 
State, a sphere suitable to it. The State was too mate- 
rial for it ; the Church was too spiritual, too superhuman, 
too much occupied with a future life. In both of them it 
found authorities which it did not like to recognise, forms 



FREEMASONRY. 00 

which it considered to be obsolete. It felt the want of a 
communion in which the purely human should have its 
right acknowledged more than it was in the State, and in 
which Illuminism should be permitted to speak more 
freely than it was in the Church. This want and craving 
found its gratification in Freemasonry. Out of the 
middle ages, England, the country adhering closely to 
traditions, had preserved its building-lodges. It had 
been an old habit to ascribe to the forms of those lodges 
a deeper meaning ; and Humanism seized them, in order 
to transform them into a secret world for its thoughts. 
From England, Freemasonry spread to the north of 
Europe, to Germany, and France. The first lodge in 
Germany arose in 1733, at Hamburg ; and soon lodges 
sprung up in all the larger towns. Princes — as Frederick 
II. ; notabilities of every kind, — even men such as Lava- 
ter, Stilling, and others, were members. Although, in 
the lodges, the fundamental forms and thoughts were fixed, 
yet a wide scope was given to reformatory tendencies, 
which, after all, lay in the spirit of the times. Adven- 
turers, such as Johnson and Baron von Hund; ambitious 
and covetous Illuminators, such as Knigge and Bahrdt, 
changed with noble-minded and serious representations of 
the masonic thought, such as Duke Ferdinand of Bruns- 
wick, Schroder, Fessler, etc. Thus the most diversified 
forms of Freemasonry arose ; and there exists the most 
thorough difference between the lodge and the order. As 
the fundamental thought, which floats above these differ- 
ences, this appears : " To unite in love and harmony all 
ranks and confessions which, in ordinary life, appear 
separated, and to make the purely human the object of 
culture ; to elevate and promote the moral element ; to dis- 
seminate a rational and liberal view of human nature and 
destiny ; to consider all men as children equal before God, 



56 ILLUMTNISM. 

and, therefore, as brethren ; to exercise love to our neigh- 
bour, and to prove it by general charity/' 1 God, the 
omnipotent Architect of the universe, stands to the world 
substantially in the relation of Creator, and man has to 
do nothing but to cultivate and develop the innate natu- 
ral foundation, by directing his knowledge to ivisdom, his 
will to strength, and his sentiments to the beautiful. Out 
of the materials of natural humanity, the freemasons 
would rear a temple of virtue. Those who have faith- 
fully done so in the lodge, hope to see each other again in 
the heavenly lodge, in the eternal East. That this fun- 
damental view is altogether deistical, is obvious, and it is 
therefore quite consistent that the lodges of loose obser- 
vances receive those also who are not Christians. When 
Freemasonry, by the establishment of the Grand Lodge in 
London, in 1717, received the form in which it spread itself 
everywhere, it could treat these thoughts, which, in Church 
and State, were strongly opposed by other thoughts, as 
much as a mystery as the symbols in which they were em- 
bodied. But, when these thoughts, in the age of Illumin- 
ism, became the general conviction, it was the form only 
which remained as a mystery; and to a prince, such as 
Frederick II., it could not fail soon to appear as a •'•' great 
nothing." This form has, no doubt, the character of an 
ecclesiastical community. There is a constitution, a con- 
fession, a worship. The " Constitutions of Freemasons'" 
are the ecumenic confession which, it may be, receives an 
individual form in the single lodges. The constitution 
grants to the Master of the Chair an almost monarchical 
position, limited by the office-bearers (speakers, superin- 
tendents, etc.), higher degrees, and the vote of the lodge. 

1 Words of a Freemason in " Die Gegenicart und Zuhunft 
der Frelmaurerei in Deuischland {Leipzig, 1854), S. 55. 



FREEMASONRY. < 

While the members of all lodges, even those of opposite 
systems, stand in brotherly and organic communion with 
one another, the lodges of the individual countries form 
an organised community, which may be compared to the 
Established Churches in the individual countries. If 
then, finally, we overlook the ceremonies in their working 
and feasting lodges, which are now-a-days sufficiently 
known, we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact, that 
they have the character of a worship ; and, indeed, there 
have of late appeared freemason-liturgies. The rites of 
reception represent, in their black chambers, symbolical 
wanderings, fearful oaths, naked swords, vanishing flames, 
altars, death-heads, and coffins, etc., the penetrating from 
the night of the profane world into the light of the order, 
and hence the counterpart of baptism. And the feasting- 
lodges have the character of a love-feast of Humanism. 
Xow, it is, indeed, strange that the search for light wraps 
itself up in the cloak of mystery ; that so many men, who 
have broken with all that is positive in religion, should 
surrender themselves to a belief in the fabulous world of 
the masonic history, in the mythology of King Hiram, 
Solomon, etc. ; that the men of liberty, equality, fraternity, 
should seek a hierarchy of lodges, in which pride, vanity, 
ambition, etc., are no less at home than in ordinary life ; 
that the men who no longer find any nourishment in the 
forms of the Christian worship, should animate these 
playings with forms, by the horrors of death, by the 
terrors of judgment, by the mysteries of the altar. 
There appears here a feature which pervades the whole 
age of Ilhminism, viz., the tendency towards the myste- 
rious. It was in this age that Swedenborg saw spirits, 
that Gassner expelled devils, that Cagliostro carried on a 
mysterious game with superstition of every kind, that the 
followers of Rosenkreuz again appraised the stone of the 



58 ILLUMINISM. 

philosopher and the tincture of life ; that the mysteries of 
magnetism were hailed with wonderful delight ; yea, that- 
even Nicolai saw spirits in Teg el, near Berlin ! 

This will be no matter of wonder to any one who remem- 
bers the times of sinking heathenism, in which superstition 
and unbelief came so closely upon each other. In an age 
of unbelief, the indestructible longing of man for religion 
seeks the pasture of unbelief. When, therefore, the 
Jesuits fell by the bull Dominus ac Redemptor Noster, 
their kingdom was not by any means at an end. 1 This 
strange mixing up of Jesuitism and Illuminism was expe- 
rienced by the Order of the Tlluminati. Weishaupt, 
professor of law in the old Jesuit University of Ingolstadt, 
formed, in 1776, the idea of establishing an order with 
a Jesuitical form, as a propaganda of Illuminism ; and 
Weishaupt 9 s plan was, by Knigge, combined with objects 
of freemasonry (1780). In this mongrel form the insti- 
tution found an immense number of adherents. In the 
many grades which it contained, it afforded scope to the 
various stand-points ; by a true Jesuitical system of obser- 
vation and guidance, it secured the single individuals, and 
put into the hands of the heads, reins which could be 
easily employed for the management of the whole. 2 

1 For particulars, see Schlosser, Geschichte des achtzehnten 
Jahrhunderts (3d ed.), iii., S. 255, ff. 

2 CI. Th. Perthes, Das Deutsche Staatsleben vor der Revolution, 
S. 262, says : — " The reigning Duke of Weimar and the heredi- 
tary Duke of Gotha, the Counts Seefeld, Seinsheim, Constanza, 
the imperial ambassador, Count Meiternich, Prebendary Count 
Kesselstadt, the Barons von Montjelas, von Meggenhoffen, etc. ; 
in Gottingen, the Professors Koppe, Feder, Martens; in Weimar, 
Goethe, Herder, Muscius, State-Minister Fritsch, Master of the 
Pages Kclstner; in Bavaria and the ecclesiastical territories, many 
prebendaries and priests, in the Protestant and Catholic towns 
many higher and lower officials, and officers, merchants, cham- 
berlains, actors and students, belonged to the order. At the 



OEDER OF THE ILLUMIXATI. 59 

While, in the middle grades, adherence to the positive 
was required, the highest rulers held the principle, that 
in the dissolution of ail that is firm in Church and State, 
true liberty manifested itself. If the order had maintained 
itself, it would have broken up Germany into fragments ; 
but it fell, so early as in 1785, by the machinations of the 
ex- Jesuits in Bavaria. These Jesuits opened up a longed- 
for world of exploits to the light-knights of Protestantism, 

head of it stood, as Primus or National, the founder. Under 
him, the order was organically divided into a number of inspec- 
tions, which is differently stated ; the inspection was divided 
into provinces; and in the provinces were the Iilnminati 
meetings of the individual towns. At the head of each division 
was a director, assisted by a chapter. In order to secure the 
existence of the order, and the employment for one object of all 
the powers of the order, manifold trials and solemnities preceded 
the reception. The action of the consecration — so it was called 
— takes place either by day in a solitary, retired, and somewhat 
dark place, e.g., in a forest ; or by night, in a silent, retired room, 
at a time when the moon stands on the sky. He who was to be 
received, confirmed by an oath the declaration that with all the 
rank, honours, and titles which he might claim in civil society, 
he, at bottom, was nothing else than- a man. He vowed eternal 
silence, inviolable fidelity, and obedience to all the superiors 
and ordinances of the order ; he solemnly renounced his private 
opinion, and every free use of his power and faculties. In order 
afterwards, also, to keep every member of the order in the most 
complete dependence upon the order, every superior, not only 
kept the most minute records of the conduct of all his inferiors, 
but every inferior also was obliged, by filling up certain pre- 
scribed schedules, to give information about the state of the 
soul, the correspondence, the literary employment, not only of 
himself, but also of his relatives, friends, and patrons. Of those 
to be received, they preferred " persons of from eighteen to 
thirty years of age, who were wealthy, eager to acquire know- 
ledge, manageable, steady, and persevering." Of two men in 
Munich on whom they had cast their eyes, it is said, in a letter 
written between 1770 and 1780 : " These two are a couple of 
devilish fellows, but somewhat difficult to manage, just because 
they are devilish fellows. Yet, if it were possible, the acquisition 
would be desirable." 



60 ILLUMINISM. 

and undoubtedly Leuclisenring and Nicolai obtained the 
prize in this. 

At the same time that Jesuitism ruined its antipode, 
in the principal Protestant state, also, a reaction took 
place. Frederick William II. succeeded to the throne 
with the feeling that State and Church were shortly to 
be dissolved, if Illuminism were permitted to proceed in 
such a way. It was from this feeling that the so-called 
religions edict of Wollner proceeded (9th July 1788). 
" With grief," so the words run in the preamble, "it has 
been remarked that so many clergymen have the boldness 
to disseminate the doctrines of the Socinians, Deists, and 
Naturalists, under the name of Illuminism. As sovereign 
and sole lawgiver in our state, we command and enjoin, 
under the penalty of immediate deposition and still severer 
punishment and visitation, according to circumstances, 
that henceforth no clergyman, preacher, or teacher of the 
Protestant religion, shall make himself guilty of the indi- 
cated and other errors, by venturing to spread such errors, 
in the discharge of his duty, or in any other way, publicly 
or secretly." An Immediate-Examination-Committee 
(Silberschlag, Hermes, Woltersdorf, Hilmer) was appointed 
to carry out this edict, but that could not be obtained. 
However well-founded were the facts to which the edict 
referred, and how much soever the king was in earnest in 
his intentions, cabinet orders were not the way to do 
away with a tendency which the former government had 
favoured by cabinet orders. Frederick William II., 
who felt the need of religion, and who was animated by a 
German sense, has been often unjustly judged. It is true 
that he did not, by his example, put a stop to the moral 
dissolution ; his government gives the impression of the 
melting sultriness after a bright and clear summer day, 
announcing the near approach of a thunder-storm. On 



HUMANISM, ILLOHNI83I, DEIS3I. 61 

the contrary, this reaction gave new life to the exertions 
and efforts of Illuminism. It is only from the fears 
which this religious edict called forth that we can account 
for the great number of men who were gained by the 
cunning stratagem of Balirdt for the project of the so- 
called German union, a Freemasonic union for the spread 
of Illuminism. 

These were the forms which Humanism took in schools 
and families, in State and Church. 1 Let us once more 
consider its relation to Illuminism. Illuminism said, — 
True is all that is clear, i.e., all that agrees with man's 
natural sense for truth — with common sense. Humanism 
said, — It is not in the positive forms of life, but in man's 
pure original sense of what is good and beautiful, that 
the root of true life lies. With the formal principle of 
the natural sense for truth (Illuminism), corresponds the 
material principle of natural sentiments in the moral 
world (Humanism), and of natural faith in the religious 
world (Deism). To nature, then, man is to return, in his 
knowledge, will, and faith. But if we consider this nature 
a little more closely, it appears to be nothing but a pro- 
duction of the mind. The natural sense for truth to 
which Illuminism appealed, was an aggregate of thoughts 
which had been deposited in the educated world by the 
stream of the development of the eighteenth century. As 
little as the state is to be deduced from the original con- 
tract, can the spirit of religion be accounted for from the 
three ideas God, Dut} T , Immortality, which evidently are 

1 I must confess that I have not been at all satisfied with what 
Hundeshagen says in his work Ueber die Natar and geschichtliche 
Entstehung der Humanitdts-Idce (i.e., On the Nature and His- 
torical Origin of the Idea of Humanism, 1853). What he says 
of the relation between Christianity and Humanism, is founded 
upon abstractions, which do justice neither to Christianity nor 
to the idea of Humanism. 



02 ILLOIIXISM. 

nothing else but abstractions from the positive religions ; 
and what was called Humanism was not the original sense 
of uncorrupted mankind, but a tracing back of the moral 
relations of life to general principles, by means of the 
understanding. Rousseau's life is a personal proof of the 
unnaturalness of this nature. Thus, one feature which 
characterizes the period of llluminism, is the tracing back 
of all life to abstractions by the understanding. With 
this a second feature is connected : common sense, which 
was looked upon as the rule of truth, was a very elastic 
and subjective resort. While Voltaire and Rousseau, by 
common sense, demanded God, Duty, and Immortality, 
the Encyclopedists taught Atheism and Materialism. 
Jacobi says very rightly of Mendelssohn and his consorts, 
who, in philosophy, professed to follow common sense, — 
" They believe that their opinion is reason, and reason 
their opinion." The same spirit of subjectivity we saw 
in Humanism. The single individual is not to be a mem- 
ber of this and that family, of this and that State, of this 
and that Church, but of humanity. But if this humanity 
be considered a little more closely, it is an aggregate of 
general principles, which the single individual adapted to 
his individuality. In Rousseau's Emile, the whole world 
appears only as a grinding-stone, which is to bring forth 
the pure humanity ; all objects of knowledge only as the 
weights destined to exercise and increase the magnetical 
power of the mind ; and the aim of humanity to which 
he is aspiring, is, if possible, not to need any man. It 
requires no proof to show that the utilitarian spirit winch 
the philanthropic education evolved is connected with the 
Ego. And that which gave life to those Freemasonic- 
humanistic circles, was, no doubt, the feeling of belong- 
ing to an aristocracy of mankind, the charm of a myste- 
rious isolation, the protest against everything existing. 



THE REVOLUTION. 63 

In this the third feature is given, — Illuminism implied 
the dissolution of all authorities, of all objective forms 
of life. English Deism was, substantially, the fruit of 
the English Revolution ; and that Illuminism would, in 
France, lead to the Revolution, the pious Cardinal Fleury 
(see Schlosser, i. S. 558) foretold, with as much confi- 
dence as Rousseau did in his Emile. and as Frederick 
II., if we may believe Eylert* announced it to his future 
successor. 1 

We have from an eye-witness, Laharpe, a remarkable 
story of a philosophical dinner, at which the poet Cazotte 
foretold to the members of the Academy, who waited 
with ardent desire for the final victory of reason, what 
their fate woidd be in the Revolution. It is not on the 
miraculous part of this story that we put any value, but 
on the light which it throws on the relations of that time, 
and on the awful contrast between the dream of philo- 
sophy, and the reality. i% People in the world had at that 
time reached the point where it was permitted to say 
everything, if the object was to excite laughter. Cham- 
fort had read to us from his blasphemous, unchaste novels, 
and the high ladies listened to them without even taking 
refuge in their fans. Then there followed a whole host 
of mockeries against religion. One quoted a tirade from 
the Pucelle ; another reminded of the saying of Diderot : 

! Perthes, in his book, Das Deutsche Staatsleben vor der Revo- 
lution {i.e., The Political Life of Germany before the Revolution), 
S. "251, has beautifully developed the character of Illuminism 
upon the territory of German politics. Three principles, he 
says, characterize Iilumiuism. First, The fundamental principle 
not to acknowledge anything as existing or binding, but that 
which one may understand and comprehend. The second funda- 
mental principle is, to acknowledge the single individual as a 
single individual only. The ihird fundamental principle is, to 
seek the value of existing tilings in their utility only. 



64 ILLUMINISM. 

' With the intestines of the last priest, strangle the last 
king/ and all applauded. Another rose, held up his full 
glass, and cried : i Yes, gentlemen, I am as sure that 
there is no God in heaven, as I am sure that Homer was 
a fool/ The conversation now became more serious. 
They spoke with admiration of the Revolution which 
Voltaire had effected, and they agreed that it was the 
chief foundation of his fame. The question then arose 
as to who, among the company, would live to see the com- 
plete victory of reason. Then Cazotte rose, and declared 
that all those present would be witnesses of the great 
Revolution (it was in 1788) ; and when they declared 
this to be a very cheap prophecy, he announced to Con- 
dorcet that he would poison himself to escape ;the execu- 
tioners ; to Chamfort, that he would himself open his 
veins ; to d'Azt/r, that he would order them to be opened 
six times ; to Rotichet, that he would die on the scaffold, 
etc. The company asked : 6 Shall we then be subdued 
by the Turks or Tartars ?' ' Anything but that ; I have 
already told you : you will immediately be under the 
reign of reason, and those who treat you thus will be 
philosophers/" 

Be it with this prophecy as it may, it is enough that, in 
the Revolution, reason exercised such a dominion. Let us, 
from our point of view, look at its course. Government, 
unable to put a stop to the financial difficulties and dis- 
tress, influenced by liberal theorists, and under the im- 
pression that they would be able to prevent extremities, 
on the advice of the notables, summoned the National 
Assembly. It was a representation, not of the organically 
constructed France, but of France consisting of heads ; 
very soon the third estate absorbed the others in it ; it 
assumed legislative powers, and very soon claimed, by- 
deeds, all power whatever. The constitutional party was 



THE REVOLUTION. 65 

in the ascendant ; every thing fell which was against the 
liberal doctrines, and the " rights of man" pretended to be 
the legal title for it ; for every thing was to be based upon 
philosophy, and all claimed to be philosophers. Public 
opinion, the National Guard, and the money obtained by 
the sale of the national property, gave power to this liberal 
party. The king had only to do what the National Assem- 
bly decreed, and with God they settled at the festival of 
14th July 1790, by a mass and a Te Deum. The priests 
paid by the State, were, of course, degraded into state offi- 
cials ; those who refused the oath were obliged to flee. 
When the National, gave way to the Legislative Assembly 
(1st October 1791), the power was no longer in the con- 
stitutional party (Fenillans), but in the republican doc- 
trinaires {Girondists) ; and the latter conquered. The 
National Convention (21st September 1792) began with 
the republic ; but it was no more the republican doctrin- 
aires, but the leaders of the unchained mob (Robespierre, 
Murat, Danton) who had the power. w The Girondists," 
says Leo (Universalgeschichte V. S. 6), " had sprung from 
wealthy and educated families. They still entertained 
the foolish hopes of educated France before the revolu- 
tion ; brotherly equality, by which the world was to be 
made happy ; a golden age, such as they had formerly 
dreamt of at their philosophical dinners, — these were still 
the cloudy gods whom they worshipped. In the mean- 
time, uneducated France had risen, and shook her limbs 
like a mighty giant. In the first instance, the Girondists 
were expelled from the Convention, and most of them had 
a fearful end. The watchword now was, Rase it, Rase it 
(Ps. cxxxvii. 7). The king died on the scaffold; the 
queen after him ; the dauphin pined away. The terrorists 
were of opinion that the republic could exist only if all 
men were virtuous, i.e., of their principles; but the 

E 



66 ILLTJMINISM. 

rascals, i.e., those of different opinions, were for the 
guillotine. " The sound of the axe of the guillotine 
was, to a certain degree, the beating of the pulse of 
the republic : and the more feverish the life in the repub- 
lic was. the more quickly did the pulse beat." What was 
now the use of a Church, of priests ? Gobet, the arch- 
bishop of Paris, exchanged the mitre for a Jacobin cap, 
and declared that he knew nothing of Christianity. The 
churches were given up to the wantonness of the rude 
mob, who performed in them immoral dances, and made 
use of the sacred vessels for eating and drinking. The 
Christian era gave way to a republican, after an abstract 
principle ; in place of the Christian festivals, came days 
consecrated to genius, to labour, to perfection, and other 
abstract things. What, finally, was now the use of a God ? 
" Reason, the self-consciousness of man, is the only God/' 
said one party, at the head of which stood Kloots. On 
the 10th of August 1793, a national feast was celebrated, 
at which a procession of members of the Convention and 
Jacobins worshipped nature — in a woman of gypsum from 
whose breasts water was flowing forth ; and in a man of 
gypsum — the people-god (le peuple-dieu.) As they, how- 
ever, soon discovered that statues of plaster of Paris did not 
correspond with the idea, they chose, as the living repre- 
sentatives of it, girls, such, of course, as corresponded with 
such a public purpose. Such, then, was the length to which 
they had come, that in the name of liberty, a bloody go- 
vernment was exercised, unexampled in all history, — that 
in the name of reason, strumpets were placed on the 
altar. The latter, however, even Robespierre found to be 
too bad (les enrages) ; he thought Atheism to be unpo- 
pular. It was at his instance that the Convention recog- 
nised the existence of a higher Being ; and, at a national 
festival in His honour, Robespierre officiated as a priest 



THE REVOLUTION. 67 

(8th July 1794). But this festival was too absurd, and 
the exasperation against Robespierre, already too great to 
allow of his gaining his object, which was less to make the 
Supreme Being popular than himself. From this time 
forward a reaction begins against the revolution. The 
terrorists fell ; people began to long for tranquillity ; the 
youth (jeunesse doree) and the press became conservative, 
and, what was the main point, the national spirit threw 
itself upon the propaganda of the revolution by means of 
arms. During the reign of the Directory, the army repre- 
sented the power of the people ; and it was from the army 
also that the man proceeded who put an end to the revo- 
lution — Napoleon. 

Napoleon knew that he could neither attain nor main- 
tain the throne without the Church. He therefore restored 
a firm form to the Roman Catholic Church, by the Con- 
cordat of 1802, and, incidentally, to the Protestant Church 
also. Notwithstanding the serious injury which the Ro- 
man See had experienced from him, Pius VII. gave the 
consecration of the Church to the imperial crown of the 
parvenu. Like so many great men of his kind, Napoleon 
seems to have been a fatalist, — a belief which lay in the 
view of the world which that period entertained ; and from 
this aspect also one may view Schiller's Wallenstein as a 
poetical prophecy of Napoleon. When Napoleon, after 
the battle of Jena, conversed with Goethe on the old 
tragedy, whether and how it was to be restored, and 
Goethe pointed to the difficulties connected with the idea 
of fate, he said that the State was the fate of the modern 
world. So, at least, it was at that time. It was in Na- 
poleon that fate overtook the states in which Illuminism 
prevailed. 

What was it, after all, which gave to the French army 
the victory over the armies of the Austrians and Prussians? 



68 ILLOIIXISAI. 

One can only answer : the republican enthusiasm. But 
this enthusiasm, as has been shown by the liberation-wars. 1 
could be broken only by another enthusiasm : that, how- 
ever, did not exist. Illuminated Germany bore in her 
own heart that seed from which, in France, the armed 
men had grown up. The blunted, tame revolution, which 
prevailed in the states of Frederick II. and Joseph II. 
had neither right nor might in opposition to the consistent 
revolution. Since the world existed, victory has always 
been where there is consistency. Sooner or later the 
German Empire would have been obliged to dissolve : but 
the old holy Roman Empire, the throne of the Hohenstaufen, 
should have fallen in a more worthy manner than by the 
resolution of the imperial Deputation (Re ichs- Dtpufations- 
Hauptschluss) Like laughing heirs, the German princes 
have buried the German Empire ; but the inheritance was 
not to prosper in their hands. At Jena, the splendour of 
Prussia's arms faded : the house of Austria dissolved 
more and more ; the princes of the middle class joined the 
Rhine Confederation, in order to become satellites of the 
French Imperial Sun. 

The dissolution of the political life was followed by the 
dissolution of the constitutional forms of the Church, from 
which the spirit had long ago fled. In 1808, Napoleon 
declared the donation of his ancestors. Pipin and Charle- 
■Y:.e. to be extinct. The pope, who protested, was led 
as a prisoner to Savona. At the same time (16th De- 
cember 1808), not only the higher consistory, but also the 
provincial consistories, were dissolved in Prussia by a 
cabinet order : and the supreme government of the Church 
was committed to a department in the ministry of the 

1 So, in German history, the continental wars, from 1813 to 
1815, are called, which had the liberation of Germany from the 
French for their immediate issue.— Tn 



GERMAN LITERATURE. 69 

interior,, which, at the same time, managed educational and 
theatrical affairs. 

After having considered the origin, character, and pro- 
gress of lUuminism. we now cast a glance on the inner 
life of Germany at the end of last century. 

The crisis in our belles lettres is marked by the con- 
troversy between the schools of Bodmer and Godsched* on 
the nature of poetry. The adherents of Godscked, imitat- 
ing French models, viewed poetry as a matter of rule and 
understanding, while the adherents of Bodmer, imitating 
English models, placed poetry in parallelism with painting, 
and assigned to it the world of the imagination and the 
affections. This proceeding from theory characterizes the 
German mind : this going back to the natural foundation, 
the spirit of the eighteenth century. All able men joined 
Bodmer : and most diversified are the tendencies and dis- 
positions which here meet us. One section (KlopstoeJ:. 
Claudius. La cater, and others), puts poetry at the service 
of the Christian faith: another (Halter, GeUert. Hage- 
dorn, and others), gives the useful, under the cover of 
beautiful, practical wisdom in the sense of the German 
middle classes ; practical wisdom, on the other hand, in 
the sense of the Frenchified higher classes, seasoned with 
>ensuality and frivolity, but yet graceful, is offered by 
Wieland. In opposition to "him, the Gottingen party 
leaning to, and supported by Klopstock, render homage 
to an abstract youthful Germanism. More concrete is 
the Prussian enthusiasm which animates Kleist. Gleim, 
Ramler, and others. One is disposed to call Lessing the 
genius of lUuminism, in the sense in which the French 
call Pascal " le genie de Port-roual. ,> He promoted 
lUuminism in so far as his original, pure, experimenting 
spirit broke through all traditionary bounds in seeking for 
the fundamental relations. He himself had the conviction 



70 ILLUMIXISM. 

of his not being a creative genius on the field of the beau- 
tiful ; but he gave clearness and depth to the dark and 
uncouth thoughts of the school of Bodmer. He purified 
the soil of literature from the rubbish of false tradition, 
unmercifully weeded out French unnaturalness, fixed exact 
limits to the various territories of poetry, pointed to the 
true models, demanded creative minds, and with great 
self-denial, rejoiced in those which he found. The terri- 
tory of philosophy he influenced by his great critical and 
dialectic skill, by exciting the tendency to advancing, striv- 
ing and seeking, by his setting an example of independence 
and freedom from prejudice. And, as in philosophy, so 
in theology also, Lessing sought to remove stagnation. 
In order to keep theology in motion, he published the 
Wolffenbiittel Fragments. The motives which he, in his 
controversy with Goze, developed with unsurpassed skill, 
correspond entirely with the motives which he upheld on 
the territory of the beautiful, viz. a removal of the hetero- 
geneous, and a going back to the original. One may 
indeed seek the motto of his life in his well known 
declaration, that he preferred the search after truth to 
the possession of it. His style also has the versatility, 
the dialectic charm, the bold touches of a man whose 
mastery consisted just in thinking aloud. Lessing is, in 
the history of German literature, the versatile Proteus — 
not himself a hero, but a voice of counsel and prophecy 
for the heroes of Troy. But how different are the spheres 
into which these heroes lead us! In Herder all the 
blossoms of Humanism are ripening ; there at once the 
palms of the East, the olives of Greece, the oaks of the 
North are thriving ; there are the shady walks of philosophy, 
the great perspectives of history, the serene temple-halls 
of a religion of Humanism. Schiller leads us into the 
realm of the ideal. Beyond this finite, vulgar world, 



&KRMAN LITERATURE. 71 

which is pervaded by a cold destructive fate, there are 
opening up to him, who has sense and faith for the beau- 
tiful, the prototypes of life, which on this earth cannot 
obtain any other reality than that of art, but may. per- 
haps, have their world in those spheres where every 
beautiful and faithful sentiment is realized. Goethe has 
shaped all the glimpses of light which the richest life 
threw into his soul, into a world of clear, distinct, and 
bright pictures of imagination, which are not, like Schiller's 
ideals in morose antagonism with the reality, but have 
the reality amidst and within themselves. 

So diversified are these tendencies that it appears im- 
possible to trace them back to one point of view. But 
whence these diversities ? One can only answer : Because 
great individuals, not bound by the determining powers 
of life, have made their individuality the measure of their 
view of life. " In the chaos of the dissolved State, of the 
decaying Ohurch, of the unsettled leading thoughts, there 
sprang up a numberless host of individualities who had 
only this in common, that the individual, with all his rights 
and whims, wished to impress his life upon the reality." 1 

This rich literature is a monument of the political and 
religious dissolution of the German nation. Xo one can 
come forward and plead : They have sung of Frederick the 
Great and of Germany's glory. Frederick was instru- 
mental in dissolving the German empire, and Klopstock's 
Germanism had not much to do with the real Germany. 
And when at length the German empire was broken up, 
the Germans slept during its fall under aesthetic dreams. 
When every thing fell to pieces, Goethe, who was getting 
old, fled to the East ; " Under loving, drinking, and sing- 
ing, Chiser's Well shall renew my youth.' 5 From the 

1 Words of Immermann, 



72 ELLTJMINISM. 

German courts, which, during the eighteenth century, had 
indeed been the seat? of the moral decay, public opinion 
had long ago estranged itself. In the world of authors, a 
kind of interdict rested on every thing belonging to the 
higher regions : in a regular play or novel of that time, a 
courtier could not well appear to be any thing but a 
hypocrite and flatterer. The acts and deeds of the many 
petty princes, the corroded life in the free imperial cities. 
the pedantic narrow-minded dragging on of outlived forms, 
were inexhaustible subjects for Jian Paufs humour. 
Humanism and Sentimentalism undermined the differences 
of rank ; the family was the only point which poetry 
surrounded with all its charms. In the dark background 
of the revolution Gothe drew his fami}j-idjl. He rn< an n and 
Dorothea. Schiller's juvenile works announced the revo- 
lution. The Bobbers represent the rupture with the 
civil order, Cabal and Love, with the social order. I 
with the legitimate princely power: Don Carlos is the 
poetry of liberalism. When the revolution itself came, 
and came differently from what it was in ScTdV.ers ideals, 
then the Bell, the mouth of the Church, was to call to 
concord, to family-peace. The much read novels of 
Lafontaine. and others, move around the family: it was 
to the man of that time fatherland and Church. And yet 
it was not the true spirit of family, but the spirit of senti- 
mentalism to which they paid homage. 

Sentimentalism is. without doubt, one of the fundamental 
features, if not the fundamental feature of the poetry of 
the second half of last century ; it is the dissolving of 
all objective spheres and modes of life into emotions, — 
a dissolving which rests on reflection. In nature, it is not 
thoughts of God, not the indications of life, not the 
groaning of the creature for the glorious liberty of the 
children of God. which it seeks, but that which affects the 



SENTIMENTALISE. 73 

emotions : in the moonshine, melancholy ; in the stars, 
elevating presentiments ; in the violets and roses, greetings 
of love. etc. Wherever men have led a human life, love 
and friendship have been acknowledged to be very great 
blessings ; but the last century considered these alone as 
the sole agents and objects of life. The sentimental Ego 
chose, according to the attraction of the heart, another 
Ego for a friend or lover ; this inclination appears to him 
to be the only one in life which has any title to exist ; the 
attraction of the heart is the voice of fate. He stakes 
every thing which can bind man, yea, even eternal hap- 
piness, upon the possession of the beloved one. But every 
motive of life must become a caricature as soon as it 
becomes exclusive, absolute. And if we look at the friend- 
ships of that time a little more closely, we shall not only find 
them to be soft and sickly, but even the result of proud, 
conceited, whimsical egotism. We do no wrong to many an 
one who, at that time, made a trade of friendship, when we 
say that he did not love his friends but his friendship, i. e., 
his self enjoyment in friendship. And this holds still 
more true of the love of that time. These Siegwarts and 
Werik&rs 1 loved indeed their love only; their love was 
subjective, not objective. Upon such extravagancies, dis- 
appointment only could follow. The author of Siegwart. 
and Jean Paul, are said to have been, in their family life, 
but too much like ordinary men. Of Leuchsenring, who 
proposed the foundation of an order of sentimentalism, 
we know that his marriage with his adored lady was as 
unhappy as can be imagined. 2 From such a sentimen- 
talism, imagining to be in heaven, casting about with 
eternities, declaiming of virtue, there was only one step to 

1 Heroes of sentimental love novels. — Tk. 

2 For particulars about Leuchsenring, see Yarnhagen von Ense, 
Denkwiirdigkeiten, iv. S. 170. 



74 ILLOIIXI5M. 

a frivolous dissolution of marriage, if other affinities were 
formed. Of Christian love this Sentimentalism had the 
appearance only. What to it was highest, viz., family- 
happiness, the Christian must be able to leave : he must 
be able, for Christ's sake, to leave father and mother, wife 
and child. But if Christ gives back a family to His 
disciples, they that have wives must be as though they 
had none (1 Cor. vii. 29). And yet those ties in which 
the Christian's heart is not to be altogether bound up, are 
indissoluble. They are not based on feelings which can 
come and go, but on the Lord, the heavenly medium in 
which husband and wife meet. In order fully to realize 
the difference, let us hear a voice from the Ancient 
Church. 2 " What a connection between two believers who 
have one hope, one order of life, one service. They are 
two in one body, and where there is one flesh, there is also 
one spirit. They pray together, they fast together ; they 
teach, exhort, and bear with, one another ! They are 
together in church, together at the Lord's Supper, to- 
gether in distress and persecution. None has to conceal 
any thing from the other ; one is not to be a burden to 
the other. Freely they visit the sick and relieve the poor. 
They vie with one another in psalms and spiritual hymns. 
Christ rejoices when He sees such, and gives them His 
peace. Where two are, there is He, and where He is, 
there the Evil One is not." But the Lord speaks to every 
age in its own language. One may well say, that in the 
age of Sentimentalism which found the chief good in the 
family, Claudius had received the mission to represent to 
it Christianity as the true family-spirit. He writes to his 
Andrew : " It has given me great delight to read in your 
letter, that your bride also is so much attached to the 

1 Tertullianus ad uxorem, ii. c. 9. 



SENTIMENTAUSM, VIRTUE. 75 

stars, and enters into your ideas, that both of you often, 
for hours, look at the glittering stars in the sky without 
being disturbed in your devotion by your love. She must 
indeed be a very fine person, and you are a good Andrew. 
I always rejoice in my heart when I hear of a man who, 
in any passion, always keeps his head uppermost, and can 
forget bride and bridegroom for something better. Good 
by, Mr Zoroaster." To the same Andrew, his alter ego, 
he writes : " I am glad to learn from Jost's invoice that you 
are intending to marry again. Well done, and much 
happiness, dear Andrew. Marrying appears to me like a 
sugar-drop, or a sugar-bean. At first, it has a sweet taste, 
and people imagine that it will continue so for ever. But 
you see that the little sugar is soon melted, and sucked 
up ; and then, with most of them, there comes inside a 
piece of assafoetida or rhubarb, and then they make wry 
faces. With thee it shall not be so. When you are done 
with the sugar, you shall find a strengthening root of plea- 
sant taste, which will do you good all your life time." To 
Claudius, the happiness of a truly Christian marriage was 
granted. 

Hand in hand with Sentimentalism went that which 
they called virtue. What is virtue ? A glance at history 
says : Something very different in different people. Of 
virtue, Socrates, the Stoics, the Romans, spoke. That 
which is common to Socrates', the Stoics', and the 
Romans' idea of virtue may be reduced to the formula : 
Giving up of the individual to the general. But this 
general was to Socrates the rational Ego, to the Stoics 
the abstraction from all finite motives, to the Romans the 
good of the commonwealth. The Christian, too, speaks of 
virtue ; but the general to which he gives himself up is 
the will of God, But the will of God is not something 
subjectively formed, but an objective law, which, however, 



76 ILLUMINISM. 

is not arrayed against a Christian person as a rigid, killing 
power, but is written on the heart by the Holy Spirit. 
The Christian is to say with his Saviour : " My meat is 
to do the will of my Father." Illuminism declared virtue 
to be the only thing firm, absolutely necessary, and the 
highest in life, but left it to the single individual to deter- 
mine the nature of virtue ; and the greater part rested 
satisfj ed with the undetermined word. 1 Claudius makes a 
minister, a disciple of Illuminism, to write thus : — " I have 
altogether thrown myself into morals and human happiness, 
but keep in abstracto, and take every thing a jour, but 
now so, then so, and every time differently, partly in order 
that the sameness may not weary them, and partly in 
order that the fixed form may not by and by gain any 
prerogatives founded upon ancestry, and thus, reason itself 
be stereotyped into superstition." The most hetero- 
geneous tendencies assumed to themselves the name of 
virtue: the flat utilitarian sense, the languid sensualism 
(Steinbart,Bahrdt), the latitudinarian Humanism, the sen- 
timental good heart, the etherealized generosity, the scorn 
and conceit of self-righteousness (Seume, and others), yea, 
even Robespierre's Terrorism. The virtue oi Illuminism 
was a thing infinitely abstract, elastic, and subjective. 

It has been regarded as a good sign, that it was in the 
age of Frederick that the first great poet of the Germans 
celebrated the Messiah in an epic. This, one may admit, 
without concealing from oneself the fact that this epic 
is a failure. It is a historical subject only which has 

* Concerning Rousseau, Schlosser, ii. S. 480, says : Rousseau 
made the matter easy to himself by connecting, by a rhetorical 
artifice, the Christian idea of virtue with that word which we, 
when it occurs with the ancients, are accustomed to translate 
thus, although the French vertu denotes something quite differ- 
ent from the same Latin word, and from the Greek word which 
we translate by " virtue." 



RELIGION. / < 

been prepared for the poetical form by tradition, — such 
as the mythical time of the Trojan war. the fabulous land 
of the Niebelungen, the legendary world of the Crusades, 
which is appropriate to the epic. Upon materials thus 
softened by the poetical spirit of the people, the poet may 
impress figures in which the spirit of the present age is 
to be found again. But what does Holy Writ, this mira- 
culous world of truth, leave for the poet to shape ? Klop- 
stock gives us poetical paraphrases of evangelical words, 
inexhaustible lyrical effusions, puts in motion the world 
of good and bad angels, etc. But these paraphrases only 
excite hunger and thirst for the simple text ; the stream 
of Sentimentaiism, which carries everything, is infinitely 
tiresome, and the poetical auxiliary figures so artificial, 
that they have no power to fascinate any one. If, in 
general, we consider the piety of Klopstocl, and of those 
men of congenial minds, such as Bodmer, Holler, Gel- 
Urt. Cramer^ and others, we must, indeed, acknowledge, 
that it has still its roots in the soil of the Church's faith ; 
but we must, at the same time, confess, that it is not 
the specific Christian, but the general religious element, 
which comes most out in it. And this piety exists in 
them as one disposition by the side of others, — by the 
side of patriotism, friendship, practical wisdom, without 
being properly reconciled with, and penetrated by, each 
other. One might be disposed to call them the poets of 
SvperneUuralism, in which the faith of the Church is 
likewise, in a similar manner, mixed up with Jlluminism, 
Criticism, etc. : and Holler and Klopstock have indeed had 
great influence upon the development of Reijihard, the 
most important of the Supernaturalists. In the character 
of Klopstock there appears considerable self-possession. 
;; His presence," says Goethe. i: had something of that of 
a diplomatist Such a man undertakes the difficult task 



78 ILLTJMINISM. 

of at once upholding his own dignity, and that of one higher, 
to whom he has to give an account. And thus Klopstock 
also seemed to conduct himself as a man of consequence, 
and as the representative of higher things, — of religion, 
morality, liberty." This feature, which is apparently 
secondary, leads us deeper. It is just the peculiarity of 
the whole period which we are reviewing, that when men 
have religion, it is they who just have religion, but religion 
has not the men. Life is a garden for use. If the roses 
of love, the everlasting flowers of friendship, the oranges 
of religion are thriving in it, so much the better and 
more beautiful ; but they are, after all, ornamental plants 
only. Hence the self-sufficiency of the men who have 
these in addition. If thus the individual felt himself en- 
titled to have or let religion alone, he might also venture 
to determine, by his own power, what his religion should 
consist of. In the poetical worlds of Schiller and Goethe, 
religion has scarcely a side-place. We have, on a former 
occasion, pointed out the vital richness of Herder ; but 
this richness wants inner unity: the magical garden of 
Herder is a labyrinth. If anywhere, this appears in his 
religious views. All schools of theology find sympathy 
and support with Herder ; that is generally known; but 
it is not known to all that Herder's idea of God is pan- 
theistic. 1 Jean Paul's religion was a chaotic fermenting 
of the mind, out of which now Deism, then Christianity, 
then a new religion seems to come forth. The prevailing 
religious view was a Sentimental Deism. God is the 



1 Erdmann, Die Entwiehelung der Deutschen Speculation seit 
Kant, i. S. 315, says : It is clear that Herder here shows himself 
as a pantheist ; it is, however, a Pantheism which is not, as he 
himself believes that of Spinoza, but rather shows an analogy 
with the Italian Philosophy of Nature — with Yanini, Campa- 
nella, Giordano Bruno. 



RELIGION. 79 

highest Being above the stars which, in a manner, not 
known it is true, combines with fate to settle the destiny 
of human life. Forbearing with the faults of men, just 
as it becomes the laws of Humanism, the highest Being 
looks only to, and most richly rewards, the virtues of 
men. But inasmuch as that fate, the tendency of w T hich 
is pre-eminently hostile, denies to virtue its reward in 
this world, the settlement of this disproportion between 
virtue and happiness will take place in a better world. 
The future world has been adorned with its brightest 
colours by the religion of Sentimentalism. One needs 
only to read in our cemeteries the tombstones of that 
period, in order to obtain some idea of what they there 
expected. He who is the resurrection and the life is not 
spoken of, but the reward of the noble ones, dried tears, 
and, above all, meeting again. The ideal of a country 
minister, a disciple of Illuminism, Voss has drawn in his 
Louise : good nature and kindly feelings, along with sub- 
stantial meals ; sentimental contemplation of nature, along 
with the proper agricultural use of nature; enthusiasm 
for Homer, Plato, and Christ, along with indefatigable 
onslaughts upon the darkness-loving generation of super- 
stition. In this picture, Voss has given a faithful repre- 
sentation of himself. He possessed the character of a 
peasant of Lower Saxony, with all the strength, moral 
purity, and good nature, but also with all the coarseness, 
stubbornness, and self-righteousness of this class of men. 
Voss could not say what he would without expressing 
himself against some one as to what he would not. He was 
always in controversy, now with Hej/ne, then with Creuzer, 
now with Stolberg, then with the Romantics, etc. Most 
characteristic is that which Perthes writes of a visit to 
Voss : — " At first, Voss spoke with the patriarchal sim- 
plicity which appears in his Louise, of God's beautiful 



80 IIXUMENISM. 

nature, of olden times, and simple men ; but when 
Fouque's name was mentioned, suddenly a spirit of hatred 
entered into the old man, so that I became terrified. 
" This Fouque also/'* so he cried, u those villains of priests 
and aristocratic sycophants have seduced, and will make 
him a Roman Catholic, just as they have done Stolberg. 
After dinner, Toss went with me alone into the garden. 
In rapid succession he spoke of a number of men, and 
called them, one after another, sneaks, malicious, de- 
ceivers, rascals. I rose and fled. Believe me that, not- 
withstanding all the appearance of family-life and spirit, 
notwithstanding all joy in flowers, there prevails in this 
house a hatred which has deeply moved and agitated me." 
This period of literature, however, is not deficient in 
witnesses of a living faith in God through Jesus Christ, 
although they do not meet us on the high road of life. 
First, there is Hamann, the Magus of the north. A con- 
suming restlessness pervades his life. Unbounded desire 
of study drove him from book to book, from one depart- 
ment of study to another, without his finding satisfaction. 
It is almost incredible what departments of knowledge he 
has wandered through. After years of irregular study, 
he threw himself, adventurer-like, into the floods of life, 
until, in London, the VTord of God found him. The 
thirst for salvation with which he read the Scriptures, 
made him find, as their centre, the salvation of the sinner 
through Jesus Christ. He had now found the firm foun- 
dation : but the wildly-burning fire of his mind was not 
extinguished. And this volcanic man was tied to friends 
who did not comprehend him, to a female servant whom 
he called his wife ! He was for a long time a clerk in an 
office, then a custom-house officer ; and yet all these cir- 
cumstances could not extinguish his fire. — they only drove 
it inwards ; and it appears that he warmed himself by 



HAMJlNN. 81 

this inwardly-burning flame. For when, in the evening 
of his life, he entered into circles such as his boldest 
imagination could only dream of ; when he lived in the 
house of a noble youth, who called him his father, at 
Pempelfort, in Jacob? s, in the circle of the Princess 
Gallitzin, life was to him too smooth and even, to allow 
of his feeling at ease. But there he found eternal rest. 
The word which the Princess Gallitzin put on his tomb- 
stone : Judaeis quidem scandalum, gentibm antem stulti- 
iiam (1 Cor. i. 23-25), is the best characteristic and 
vindication of the aim of his life. He was a knotty 
" wonder-oak " ( W under eiclxe), from which the winds of 
the spirit of the time elicited oracles. What he wrote 
are flying leaves which he cast into his time, and yet he 
wrote as if he were writing for himself alone. Upon the 
powerful thoughts which he threw into his time, he im- 
pressed in hieroglyphics the vital spirit through which 
they had grown in him. The strange and confused mixture 
of his style is a representation of the union of all powers of 
life, which he considered as the stand-point of truth. A 
Pan (*&*), as Jacobi called him, he saw the life in the 
unity of all opposites (coincidentia oppositoriim.) For 
this reason, he denounced, with destructive irony, the age 
of abstractions in which he lived. His age smiled at that 
strange form, without having the least perception of the 
divine in its interior ; he and his cause were foolishness 
to it. The point of the unity of the opposites, which had 
their residence in this powerful individual, the hypostasis 
of his existence, was faith. — While in Hamann, the 
thoughts which he brought to light, wrapped up in all 
the filthy coverings of birth, are the most important 
thing ; in Stilling, it is the wonderful course of life which 
Providence led him. At a time when most of his writings 
will be long forgotten, his life will still be read. It was a 

F 



82 ILLUMINISM. 

wanderer's life, in which the most beautiful point is the 
father's house from which it proceeded, and the father's 
house, which, in his pilgrimage, he sought : Blessed are 
they who are home-sick, for they shall come home. Thou- 
sands have already been comforted and strengthened by 
the miraculous manner in which he was led. A wander- 
ing life, indeed, it was in this sense also, that our wanderer 
allowed himself to be much determined from without ; and 
in the change of the professions which he adopted, he 
never felt himself entirely at ease. The restlessness which 
was burning in Hamanris soul, appears, in Stilling, to be 
more external ; the wanderer was often, in a sickly man- 
ner, longing for rest, and in an artificial way sought the 
traces of the future life in that which now is ; he liked 
to have intercourse with the world of spirits, like his elder 
cotemporary, Swedenborg. — Lavaters life, too, had much 
of an outward bent. That which Stilling was never able 
fully to become, he was, viz., the missionary of faith in 
an age of general unbelief. Many things in him remind 
us of Zinzendorf. In him, too, faith was almost a natural 
feature, almost a passion ; he, too, was of a never-tiring 
energy; he, too, possessed a wonderful power over minds. 
His faith was almost innate. It is from this circumstance 
that we can understand that faith could be to him a 
magic power, which every man carries within himself as 
a relic of the original glory. And Jesus Christ, also, 
without whom, he firmly believed, no one has the Father, 
— in whom not to believe was to him Atheism, — Jesus 
Christ, also, was to him not God manifest, in the sense of 
the doctrine of the Church, but the man in whom all the 
divine powers of humanity were concentrated. In this, 
his tendency to humanize faith, we recognise the age of 
Humanism. And with this, that other circumstance is 
surely connected, that, to the astonishment of his friends, 



LAYATEE. bo 

and to the offence of his enemies, he could declare every one 
to be called, and bound, and able to believe. " He could 
preach," says Jacobi of him, " like one who drives a nail 
into a brick." But that which induced him to offer his 
faith to every one, was a burning love to win souls to the 
Lord. And it is wonderful that he, a man who was dis- 
posed to think most favourably of every one who came in 
contact with him ; who, with a constant enthusiasm, spoke 
of men who held the very opposite of his views and sen- 
timents, as, for example, IVieland, — that he should have 
had an appreciation so acute and deep for the peculiarities 
of men. That such, however, was the case, is proved be- 
yond all doubt, by his Physiognomic in which Lavater 
paid his tribute to his time : for it is only in a time in 
which that which is personal had acquired such promi- 
nency, that such a study of the personal, even to its most 
accidental peculiarities, was possible. 1 With him, how- 
ever, this study was altogether subservient to that love 
which led him to seek the winning of souls to Christ. 
His vocation was to preach Christ to his congregation ; 
but the love of Christ constrained him to preach Christ 
wherever he, the well-known man, appeared, in season 
and out of season. And every thing in him, his whole 
person, was preaching ; this beautiful soul, breathing in 
Christ, was in a beautiful body. And it was from within 
that there was formed his social appearance also, which 
attracted all, even those who most stood without ; he 
gained, without words, by his walk and conversation. 

1 Herbst, Bibliothek Christlicher JDenker, ii. S. 151, says : " The 
tendency to Physiognomy quickly spread through all Germany, 
so that it appeared as if Lavater had touched the key-note of 
the time." This was true, also, in so far as, just at that time, 
the sense for individuality became more lively ; and this sense 
was, as Goethe also acknowledges, still more awakened and 
nourished by the work of Lavater. 



84: ILLUMINISM. 

When a youth, his mouth was shut; 1 when he became a 
minister, his mouth sent forth wonderful words; faith 
and love had opened it. As the thoughts rose within 
him by an inexhaustible productive power, so flowed his 
words. Of course a fixed form must as little be sought in 
his words, as a system in his thoughts ; he was too rich 
to be consistent. What he has been enabled to do, in 
word and deed, is really astonishing. Indefatigable in 
prayer, he could work as only few are able. Even the 
letters which he wrote, would, to many an one, appear as 
the work of a whole life. There were at one time five 
hundred letters lying unanswered on his writing-table : 
to such an extent did his age lay claims upon him. He 
always carried paper with him, in order immediately to 
write down every thought. Such activity had, no doubt, 
the character of restlessness, — hence here, also, restless- 
ness, the restlessness of deed. Whatever Lavater did, he 
remained, in that period, the voice of a preacher in the 
wilderness. While Stilling, in the restlessness of home- 
sickness, sought to withdraw into the world of spirits, 
Lavater was seeking the presence of divine powers in the 
world. With the conviction, that in faith there is some- 
thing magical, a hidden power to remove mountains, he 
sought for miracles, thus bringing disgrace upon this age 
of Illuminism. He was acquainted with Cagliostro; he 
zealously inquired into the facts and merits of Gassner's 
miraculous cures, and in an open letter asked S&mler to 
give his opinion ; he hailed with joy the appearance of 
Mesmerism merging up towards the close of the century. 
That was, to many, a stone of oifence, or, at least, a means 
of getting rid of the impression which the wonderful man 
had made upon them. In his death Lavater proved that 

? When a youth, he was shy, unteachable, stupid, dreamy,-— Tr, 



CLAUDIUS. 85 

his faith did not rest merely on transient and unsteady 
feelings ; for, in a hostile bullet, he carried a painful death 
within himself for more than three months i 1 but even for 
that he praised God ; even then he laboured with un- 
tiring zeal ; and these words of the man who already 
stood with one foot in the other world, — these words from 
eternity, as he himself called them, — had the greatest 
effect. He died during the first days of the new century, 
which, it is much to be desired, should not forget him. 

The last in this circle whom we have to mention is 
Claudius. He, too, does not belie his age. He has every 
thing which was dear to it, love, friendship, domestic re- 
tirement and peace, Germanism ; all these he has, and 
has in a manner more true, genuine, and natural, than 
any one else. But the harmony of all this beautiful 
music of his life is Christ. He speaks of himself as un- 
worthy even to be named by the side of those celebrated 
men of his time ; to admire them was his delight,' — a 
natural defect, as he jokingly said, — and yet his unas- 
suming words have out-lasted the trumpet-sounds of Klop- 
stock, and the brilliant world of Herder. He judges of 
his time more strikingly and deeply than any other ; he 
utters the profoundest thoughts in words easily written 
down, and in his child-like irony he always hits the nail 
on the head. No one among the popular writers of our 
time has attained to his popular tone. He was what 
they make. 2 

1 At the capture of Zurich, on the 26th September 1799, a 
grenadier shot him in the side, while he was employed in the 
street in assisting some unfortunate people. — Tr. 

2 Grundtvig Wdchronik, S. 457, says, " Claudius was a true 
son of Martin Luther, not in strength and zeal, it is true, but in 
child-like sense, in simple-hearted cheerfulness, in the cordial 
appropriation of the Divine word in its wonderful unction and 
sweetness. His writings are, no doubt, the last German ones 



86 ILLUMWISM. 

These living witnesses for Christ stood too isolated in 

their time not to have personally discovered one another. 
A centre of union formed the circle at Minister, the soul 
of which was the Princess GalUizin. who. by the word of 
Scripture, had been led from Plato to Christ. In intimate 
communion with her lived F . Kater- 

kamp, whom afterwards Stolberg joined. There were 
Roman Catholics who did not feed upon opposition to 
Protestantism, who did not seek in the Roman Church 
that which was Roman, but that which was Christian. 
It was Christianity which, in the age of the Revolution 
and Rationalism, Frederick Stolberg sought in the bosom 
of the Romish Church. That even a man like Lavater 
understood, as he has expressed it in that excellent letter 
to him. Stolberg did not save himself from Protestantism 
in order to give over to destruction, by a push with his 
foot, the tossed vessel from which he leaped, as so many 
modern perverts are wont to do. u The Reformation.''* so 

of which one is entitled to say that Luther's spirit was breath- 
ing in them : and it is with indignation or pity that one must 
perceive the misplaced condescension with which the be^ r 
Kings of Parnassus reached him their hand to kiss it., as if he 
were their court-jester, while he was surely elevated high above 
their petty greatness, which he did not make them feel, only be- 
cause he was a child-like angel. Just as he had, as it were, 
come into a strange world by mistake only, so he would fain en- 
deavour to get out of it by smiling. But that would not do. 
When he became older, he got angry, as the world said : and 
indeed, he gave it a bad character in his old age. But as his- 
tory has so unmistakeably confirmed his opinion, we need not 
ask what i: says of the opinion of the world regarding it. A: 
the time of Terrorism, even on the lips of a Christian, smiling 
could not but vanish ; at the storms which threatened the 
Church, even her most peaceful children were obliged to take up 
arms. So Claudius, too, was obliged to ask, at a time when the 
fiery balls were flying around the sanctuary of truth, whether 
he should quietly, and cold as an icicle, hang on the roof of the 
temple of toleration. 



GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE TIME. «/ 

he writes to his sound Protestant publisher, Perthes. 
w originally proceeded from a pure intention; and although. 
I am assured, that Luther took much more from them who 
joined him than men can give, yet I acknowledge the 
numerous and great advantages which have arisen from 
the conflict of the two churches, for those who re- 
mained Catholics. Never shall I lift up a stone against 
the person of Luther, in whom I admire not only one of 
the greatest spirits that ever lived, but also great piety 
which never forsook him." With the greatest freedom 
these Catholics carried on their intercourse with the Pro- 
testants. The Princess Gallitzin was the sponsor of one 
of Cfo.v.Jius' children ; she received Hermann in his old 
age as a man of God ; and when she buried him at a par- 
ticular place, the clergy of Minister asked her to bear 
witness to them that they would willingly have buried 
him in the Catholic church-yard. 1 Sailer also felt at 
home in this communion in Jesus of true Catholics and 
true Protestants. 2 

In taking, then, a summary review of the character of 
all these Christian individuals, we find in all of them a 
certain restlessness. Even Claudius, who in his family 
had built a tabernacle, in which it was good to be, had a 
great longing to depart. This restlessness is very easily 
accounted for from their standing alone in a world alien- 

1 Jacob?* Briefe I. S. 4S2. 

2 All that our author says, in reference to these Roman Catho- 
lics, only proves that they were good men, and better Christians 
than Catholics, and that they, too, were affected by that 
subjectivism which, a few lines further down, he points out as 
the characteristic feature of this period. Having, however, to 
write a history of Protestantism, and not of Roman Catholicism, 
he is satisfied with having stated the fact. Roman Catholicism 
is, in genera], in Germany, looked at from a point of view dif- 
ferent from what it is in this country, and especially by men of 
the high Lutheran school, to which our author belongs. — Te. 



03 ILLUMINISM. 

ated from God ; yea, it would often appear as though 
they gave up their cause for lost ; but their comfort then 
was that they, at least, would remain faithful to what they 
had experienced. And Christianity, resting altogether 
upon these persons, has an altogether personal character. 
The peculiar style of Hamann, the conviction which Jung 
Stilling has of his mission, the unrestricted activity in 
which Lavater's faith indulged, the artless manner in 
which Claudius has drawn himself in his descriptions of 
peaceful retirement, can be accounted for only from the 
isolated position which these men occupied in these times. 

We thus see that this period follows subjective interests 
in its humanistic efforts, as well as in literature and reli- 
gion ; yea, that even the men who were almost alone in 
their profession of adherence to the old doctrines, did not 
deny the subjective spirit. We may thus, then, simply 
affirm, that Subjectivism was the spirit of the eighteenth 
century. 1 

That this result is, in the main, correct, is proved by 
the course which German philosophy has taken since 
Kant. 

Although we cannot adopt the opinion of the specula- 
tive School, according to which, philosophy is the self- 
consciousness of our age, yet so much is certain, that 
Kant's philosophy would not have exerted such an influ- 
ence, if it had not given expression to that which the age 
was seeking. Descartes had proceeded from doubt ; but- 
being set at rest by the idea of God, he had returned to 
the territory of objective truth, with the conviction of 
having, in clearness, the measure of truth. This convic- 
tion Kant declared to be an improper supposition, dog- 

1 Roseiikranz (Geschichte der Kantschen Philosophie, S. 67 ff.) 
arrives at the same result, although he proceeds from a diffe- 
rent point of view. 



KANT. 89 

matism. On the other hand, Hume denied universality 
and necessity to ideas. Between that dogmatism and 
this scepticism, criticism placed itself as the medium of 
truth. " Before we can attain to the knowledge of truth," 
says Kant, "we must first examine whether the medium 
of truth, viz., our mind, is able to know truth." This 
inquiry Kant carries on in the Critick of pure reason. 
He distinguishes three faculties of knowledge : Percep- 
tion, Understanding, Reason. Perception has to do with 
single objects ; Understanding with notions ; Reason with 
ideas. Perception views all its objects in time and space. 
Time and space are not in the things without, but they 
are forms which our perception brings to the things, the 
frame, so to speak, into which it puts all its images. 
Understanding thinks, judges, infers according to cate- 
gories, which do not belong to the things in themselves, but 
to our mind only. Reason has the ideas : universe, soul, 
God ; but the existence of these ideas cannot be proved. 
Kant refuted the ordinary arguments for the existence of 
God. The result of this criticism thus is : the human 
mind has, in its a priori medium, forms to which univer- 
sality and necessity belong (in opposition to scepticism), 
but only a subjective one ; but it cannot claim to know 
objective being, — the thing in itself (in opposition to dog- 
matism). If, then, our theoretical reason must allow the 
things external to it not to be cognizable, practical reason 
has a firm, immoveable ground. It demands, with abso- 
lute necessity {categorical imperative) : act as a general 
being, i.e., as a member of the universe, as a rational being. 
But man has within himself desires, the common aim and 
object of which is the gratification of self. While practi- 
cal reason says, Act as a general rational being, the de- 
sires say, Act as a particular being, in an arbitrary way. 
He only is virtuous who, in his actions, is not determined 



90 HJLUMINISM. 

by desires, but by reason. But virtue would be without 
a sphere, unless objects of action were brought to it by 
the desires. The territory of virtue, and that of desires 
mutually require one another. Now, it is here that the 
idea of God, which was given up on the territory of pure 
reason, obtains its right as a postulate of practical reason. 
The domain of virtue, and that of desires, are heterogene- 
ous worlds, but yet ordained for one another. Hence 
there must be a power which has harmonized both of 
these domains, and that power is God. As virtue does 
not reach the highest good in this world, which highest 
good consists in the unity of that which reason and the 
desires seek after, i.e., worthiness and happiness, this ideal 
must needs be realised in another life after death. The 
theological results of his criticism, Kant has developed in 
his "Religion within the limits of reason." He rejects 
any stand-point which places itself in opposition to the 
positive in Christianity (naturalism), but is in favour of 
a rational faith (rationalism) connecting itself with it. 
This connection he gained by changing, by means of an 
allegorical exposition, the doctrine of the Scriptures and 
the Church into moral religion. 

The philosophy of Kant stood in opposition to that of 
Illuminism; i.e., the Popular Philosophy: it declared the 
universe to be something not cognizable, while the Popular 
Philosophy imagined to have it thoroughly cleared up by 
means of common sense. Feder, Garve. Mendelssohn, 
Eberhard, and others, therefore, protested, more or less 
decided^, against Kant. But, from this it by no means 
follows that Kant was a phenomenon heterogeneous to 
the age of Uluminism. How strange soever it may sound, 
it is nevertheless true, that those philosophers who make 
so loud professions of intellectual liberty, and would put 
no limit to progress, are commonly so much shut up within 



KAXT. 91 

their circle of ideas, that they offer the most violent oppo- 
sition to true progress. We saw above, that Wolff and 
the Popular Philosophers imagined that they had the sub- 
stance of the things in those clear notions which were to be 
got at so cheap a rate. From this mechanical mode of 
solving the problems of the universe, there was only one 
step to the stand-point of Kant, who declared that it was 
not Being in itself, but only our own notions of it of which 
we can be cognisant. We recognised, as the peculiarity 
of Illuminisiii. the endeavour of the subjective understand- 
ing to resolve life into abstractions. But this endeavour 
found its consistent expression in a philosophy which 
ascribed, as the only thing true, a priori forms to theore- 
tical reason, and a priori postulates to practical reason, 
and hence enveloped man altogether in abstractions. The 
autonomy of morals, and reducing all religion to postulates 
of morals, were entirely in the spirit of IUuminism. And 
hence it happened also, as we shall see hereafter, that the 
theology of IUuminism unhesitatingly proceeded to Kant, 
without giving up anything essential. It is not likely that 
Kant would, by his writings alone, have exerted so power- 
ful an influence upon his age. But a large circle of pupils 
gathered around him, who, by extracts, dictionaries, letters, 
etc., made Kant's abstract doctrines palatable to the edu- 
cated public. The influence of Kant's philosophy upon 
general scientific circles was produced chiefly through the 
medium of the Jenaische Liter aturzeitung (Jena Literary 
Gazette), edited by Schitfz, which was a decided organ of 
this school. Those spheres which were not reached by 
this organ, were, by Schiller, Tiedge, and others, impreg- 
nated with Kantian doctrines. And to still lower strata 
were Kant's thoughts brought down by the theologians. 
What were all the churches compelled at that time to 
hear, of time and space, of the harmony between virtue 



92 ILLUMINISM. 

and happiness ! If we consider a little more minutely the 
most influential disciples of Kant, the relation of Kant to 
Iiluminisni becomes still more obvious. It is especially 
Beinhold, who. by his letters on Kant's philosophy, has 
contributed to an appreciation of Kant. Reinhold was 
brought up underthe influence of llluminism in Vienna, but 
soon sought in philosophy the universal prop offflumin Ism, 
But it appears clearly enough, from Reinhold's develop- 
ment, how little was the support which philosophy could 
afford to it. He soon went beyond Kant, and then agreed 
with Fichte, in order to turn from him to Bardili. Kkse u:et- 
ter's efforts to transplant the Kantian philosophy into the 
convictions of the educated, bear throughout the character 
of llluminism. And by what other term can we designate 
the attempts of Krug ? l 

Philosophy could not stand still at the results brought 
about by Kant. Over against the cognising subject stands 

1 Rosenhranz. 1. c. S. 305, says : " If any one is able to repre- 
sent the literary industry of Leipzig-, it is Erin. He can write 
in every form — cornpend : u:ns, systems, dictionaries, treatises, 
tales, speeches, reviews, circular letters, with and without name, 
serious and satirical. All these he writes with equal ease. He 
has, in the highest degree, an Encyclopaedic head: he has even 
published an Encyclopaedia of Military Science. An inextin- 
guishable agility, which defies old age; an ai dent desire to give his 
vote on every thing, to leave no turn, no event of literature without 
the baptism of his popular water, force from him pamphlets upon 
pamphlets. He is a self-thinker, like Xicolai, who is at rest 
only when he has given the world the benefit of his opinion. But 
Krug is in reality a thoroughly honest man. He is most sincere 
in his efforts on behalf of llluminism, in his clamour for light 
and improvement, in his enchusiasm for common sense, and 
wishes only to be just, as he has most gloriously proved on many 
occasions. One would be as much mistaken in considering 
Krug as a great philosopher, as one wouid be wrong in not 
acknowledging his great merits in spreading abroad an interest 
for philosophy, for the advancement of a rational, political, and 
ecclesiastical liberalism, as well as his sterling honesty." 



FICHTE. 93 

an object which cannot in itself be known ; the dualism 
demands a reconciliation. In the subject, faculties of 
thinking, willing, and feeling, were distinguished, without 
any one's knowing in what relation they stand, and which 
is their higher unity. In a critico-analytical way, Kant 
had stated results ; it was natural that now an attempt 
should be made to reduce, synthetically, these results 
to a unity. Now, when disciples, such as Relnhold and 
Bed:, whom Kant had once joyfully welcomed as ex- 
pounders of his philosophy, were, from the ground occu- 
pied by Kant, striving for that unity, the old sage shook 
his head doubtfully. A young theologian had sought to 
commend himself to him by a critique on ail revelation, 
which he had composed in a few days. The i: Jena Literary 
Gazette'' reviewed it as a composition by Kant : but it was 
by Fichte. And hence it happened that the young and highly 
promising philosopher was called to Jena in the room of 
Reinhold. Kant had expected of him that he would make 
use of his skilful mode of representation for spreading the 
critical philosophy ; but he proceeded on the way on which 
Reinhold and Beck had entered. i; I think" — he writes 
in one of his first publications — " I have discovered the 
way on which philosophy must raise itself to the rank of 
an evident science." This way Fichte called Wissensehafis- 
lekre (doctrine of knowledge or science.) While the indi- 
vidual sciences employ themselves with individual subjects, 
such as religion, law, nature, etc., the Wissenschaftslehre 
considers that which all individual sciences presuppose, 
the foundation and essence of knowledge. The point on 
which the Wissenschaftslehrehinges is self-consciousness, — 
the Ego. This Ego, as Fichte has often protested, is not 
an individuality, but rather the generalized, absolutely 
viewed Ego, — if one wills (and Fichte sometimes so ex- 
presses it)— God. In this Ego three facts are implied : 



94 ILLUMENISM. 

Thesis. Antithesis, Synthesis. It is from this principle 
that Fichte endeavours to deduce all facts of conscious- 
ness, and that with, mathematical evidence. The method 
proceeds thus : — that out of the thesis an antithesis is 
brought forth, which forces to a synthesis, until out of this 
synthesis a new antithesis is produced, until all anti- 
theses are produced, until all antitheses are exhausted. 
This is not, of course, the place for bringing out in detail 
the results of the Wissenschaftslehre. Like Kant, Fichte 
distinguished between theoretical and practical reason. 
In the theoretical reason, the Ego affirms itself to be 
determined by the Non-Ego : in the practical reason, the 
Non-Ego is itself affirmed and determined by the Ego. 
The Ego affirms the Non-Ego opposed to it, in order to 
prove itself to be the absolute deed which again removes 
the limit which itself had put. Theory has thus its founda- 
tion in practice. The absolute Ego has a logical existence 
only ; it exists only in a multitude of finite Egos, the aim 
and end of which is to raise themselves legally and morally 
into a universal Ego. This universal Ego is humanity. 
The history of humanity is pervaded by a progress, in 
which the Ego more and more proves itself to be the abso- 
lute power. This moral progress Fichte called " God." 

At first Kant had assumed the same position towards 
this system of his disciple as he had done to Feinhold, 
Beck, Maimon, and others. In a letter to Fichte, he 
warned him to beware of subtleties, scholasticisms, etc. 
The bold advance of Fichte, however, put him so much 
out of humour, that he publicly, and in very strong ex- 
pressions — he spoke of blockheads — denounced and de- 
clared against the Wissenschaftslehre. At that time Fichte 
wrote to his pupil Schelling remarkable words, which, in 
proof of an assertion previously made, we shall here 
quote : — " It is quite natural, and a matter of course, dear 



FICHTE. 95 

Schelling, that while the defenders of the pre-Kantian 
metaphysics have not yet ceased to tell Kant that he deals 
in fruitless subtleties, Kant should now say the same ; — 
it is quite natural, and a matter of course, that while 
these individuals, in opposition to Kant, give the assur- 
ance that their metaphysics still stand uninjured, uniru- 
proveable, and unchangeable, for time eternal, Kant should 
now give the same assurance regarding his metaphysics in 
opposition to us. Who knows where, even now, the young 
and ardent head is at work, which shall go beyond the 
principles of the Wissenschaftskhre, and will endeavour 
to prove that it is erroneous and defective." Fichte had 
no conception that he to whom he wrote was to be that 
very ardent head. 

Xo doubt Fichte's system is the consequence of Kant's 
critique, and in this consequence, the consequence of Illu- 
minism too appeared. As from liluminism, which resolved 
everything into abstractions, there was only one step to 
Kant, who allowed the universe to stand as an unknown 
quantity, and declared the moral consciousness to be the 
only thing absolutely necessary and stable ; so there was 
only one step from Kant to that stand-point which declared 
the Ego to be the absolute. Self- consciousness, which, in 
Descartes, had viewed itself as that which is absolutely 
certain, makes, in Fichte, all objective being to evaporate 
in itself. Subjectivism, the innermost moving agency of 
liluminism thus reaches in Fichte its boldest height. 

•'•' Fichte," as has been said by Schelling, (i is the philo- 
sophical blossom of the old time, and, in so far, its limit. 
It is scientifically expressed in his system, which, in this 
respect, will remain an eternal and enduring monument. 
If Ms age hated him, it was because it had not the courage 
to view, in the light of his doctrine, its own image, which 
he drew with power and freedom ." 



CHAPTER II. 

THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMmiSM. 

The development of Protestantism repeats in a peculiar 
manner the course of the Church previous to it. As, in 
the first four centuries, the productive spirit of the Church 
proposed to itself the view of Christianity as a whole, so 
also is the time from the beginning of the Reformation 
to the Augsburg Confession one pre-eminently creative, 
and which lays the foundation of the Lutheran Church, 
as regards its Confession of Faith. 1 With the endeavour 
pervading the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, more 
distinctly to work out the single doctrines, corresponds 
the work of the Lutheran Church up to the time 
of the Formula Concordiae, by which the various differ- 
ences of doctrines are settled. As the Church of the 
Middle Ages had handed down to it, as a firm foundation, 
the doctrinal matter produced by the Fathers, and sanc- 
tioned by the Church, which Scholasticism then undertook 

1 Our Author speaks of the Lutheran Church as being the 
Protestant Church of Germany. He himself is a zealous Lu- 
theran, and may therefore be expected to take this view of her. 
But, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that the Protestant 
Church of Germany is pre-eminently Lutheran ; that the Re- 
formed Church is not only in the minority, but divided into 
Zwinglians, Calvinists ; that it not only never exerted any influ- 
ence upon the religious development of Germany, but, on the 
contrary, was always and everywhere more or less influenced 
by the Lutheran Church, so that it never worked out its peculiar 
principles, never attained to a vigorous life. In most cases we 
might, without doing violence to the author or his meaning, put 
" Evangelical " instead of " Lutheran." — Tb. 



THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINISM. 97 

to work out and digest in a systematic manner, so there 
arose in the seventeenth century — the Protestant Middle 
Ages — a Scholasticism which put into a regular form 
the Lutheran Confession of Faith embodied in the For- 
mula Cmcordiae. As, in the Middle Ages, Mysticism stands 
side by side with Scholasticism, so we meet, in the seven- 
teenth century, by the side of the strict representatives 
of Scholasticism, the Protestant mystics Jacob Bohme, 
Arndt, and others. This mystical tendency acquired an 
immense importance about the end of the seventeenth, 
and the beginning of the eighteenth century. A parallel 
betwixt this period and that of the fourteenth cen- 
tury is obvious. In the fourteenth century, the romantic 
spirit had become extinct ; Scholasticism had outdone 
itself; from France there flowed out over Europe a 
worldly spirit ; the Roman See had decayed ; everything 
was in dissolution. Then, from the reaction against the 
externalized Scholasticism and secularized life, there 
broke forth, on all hands, and in the most varied forms, 
mysticism, which had in itself a reformatory feature. In 
like manner, after the Thirty Years' War, the blossom of 
Germany had withered ; the religious spirit, which, since 
the period of the Reformation, had been the first power 
in Germany, had stepped into the background ; while, on 
the other hand, the secular spirit had been let loose, 
along with a powerful retinue of immorality, especially 
by the preponderance of France under Louis XIY. In 
the Roman, as well as in the Lutheran and Reformed 
Churches, there rose, against the prevailing secularization 
of life, the extern alization of ecclesiastical forms, and the 
ossification of the doctrine of the Church, a mystico-piet- 
istic spirit. In France, Jansenism developed more and 
more its mystic feature : the restless Madame Guy on pro- 
claimed a mysterious peace in God ; the noble Fenelon 



98 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINISM. 

represented the power of a self-sacrificing love to God. 
In Italy, Molinos, in his Spiritual Guide, praised as the 
highest a silence in God, dissolving all the emotions of 
the mind. In Germany, Angelus Silesius sought in Ro- 
man Catholicism a rich pasturage for his mystical longing 
after union with God. In the Reformed Church there 
arose, from opposition to the externalized Church of 
England, the Quakers and Methodists. The seers of the 
Camisards remind us of the times of Montanism. The 
Labadists urge the position, that the Spirit goes beyond 
the written word* It was at this time that Spener ap- 
peared. What he found fault with in the Protestant 
Church of his time was dead faith, knowledge without life, 
forms without spirit, worldliness under the cloak of ortho- 
doxy. What he demanded was — Life. Spener was a man 
of a nature so quiet, well-regulated, cautious, exemplary 
in all the relations of life, that the inferences which his 
orthodox opponents to his views drew, rebounded from his 
person; and yet ail these inferences were not far-fetched. 
It was by this mystico-pietistic feature of the time that 
Angeli brethren {Engelsbruder), Chiliastic dreamers, 
visionaries, prophets, who claimed equality not only with 
the- ancient prophets, but with Christ himself, were 
brought forth and supported. To charge against Spener 
and his disciples all the issues of Pietism, would be as un- 
historical as it would be to express an opinion on Pietism 
without considering it in connection with all these pheno- 
mena of mystic subjectivism. Godfried Arnold, the 
Church historian of Pietism, has pointed to the sub- 
jective tendencies of all centuries as the witnesses for 
Pietism. We have now, for a considerable time, been 
able to look at the origin, character, and influence of 
Pietism, and yet our present age is still very unsetttled 
in its opinion about this phenomenon. Whatever may be 



PIETISM. 99 

one's position, so much must be granted, that Pietism has 
been called forth by the externalization of doctrine and 
the secularization of life, and that it has exercised a 
blessed influence upon the renovation of the Church and 
the spiritualization of life. But all this one may grant, 
and yet consider Pietism as an apostacy from the faith of 
the Fathers, as many of Spener's orthodox contemporaries 
did. But the modern middle-school theology — Dorner 
may in this instance be mentioned as its representative — 
finds, on the other hand, in Pietism a necessary stage in 
the development of Protestantism, a supplement of the 
Reformation, and an essential element in the religious 
consciousness of the Present. 1 But to those who, like 
ourselves, are standing on the ground of the Lutheran 
Confession, the opinion on Pietism depends upon the 
question — Has Pietism gone beyond the foundation of 
our confessions ? History obliges us to answer, Yes. We 
apply to the doctrine of justification through faith the 
words of the Smalcaldic articles : — " Of this article no- 
thing can be yielded or conceded, although heaven and 
earth, and whatever will not stand, should fall. And it 
is on this article that everything rests which we teach in 
opposition to the pope, the devil, and the world." Now, it 
is just this article which Pietism has not, indeed, directly as- 
sailed, but yet has removed from its centre, and neutralized. 
The Lutheran Church had always taught that the faith 
which lays hold of Christ's merits must be a living faith ; 
but that which justifies man is not the life in this faith, 
but the object of which it lays hold — the merit of Christ. 
Pietism, however, measured life by this subjective quality 
of life. And this life in faith it could not separate from 
the life which faith works, from the fruits of faith. It 

1 Ueber den Pietismus und sein Verhaltniss zur Kirche. (TheoL 
Studien u, Krit, 1840, H. I., S. 137, ff.) 



100 THE THEOLOGY OF 1LLUMIKIS3I. 

was not justification, but repentance, awakening, assur- 
ance which were the watchwords of Pietism. Sanguine 
natures, such as Zinzendorf. might thus easily ascribe to 
the Holy Spirit the flickering feeling of joyfulness, while, 
on the other hand, melancholy natures, such as Semler's 
brother, might torment themselves to death. One may 
well say, that the Pietists made the awakening their 
material principle. And so likewise, the formal principle 
of our church came into a different position. " What," 
so it may be objected, " does not the merit of Pietism 
consist in its having led back from dead doctrinal notions 
to the word of Scripture?" Scripture was to Pietism 
something different from what it was to the Reformers. 
It was just because Pietism, in its view of faith, looked 
chiefly to the subject, rather than to the object of faith, 
that Scripture was to it, not so much the fountain of 
truth, as a divine book of devotion and edification. We 
cannot apply to the Pietists what we find written regard- 
ing the Christians in Berea, "that they searched the 
Scriptures daily whether these things were so. " Oetinger, 
a man to whom an organ for Pietism was given, says : 
" I have seen in Count Zinzc7idorf, that he made Scrip- 
ture a collection of texts only, and arranged them in such 
a manner that he might easily, and all at once, have access 
to ; and success with, souls. He would not hear of the 
connection and context of Scripture, because he thought 
that the apostles had not spoken according to it. He 
brought forward two articles only : (1) That we are, and 
must feel ourselves to be, sinners ; and (2) That we must 
feel the blood of Christ in us ; and these articles he taught 
disconnected from Christ's priestly office." Since Pietism, 
in the matter of faith, looked to the subjective, and not at 
all to the objective element, it was implied in this very 
circumstance, that they were indifferent as to the objects 



PIETISM. 101 

of knowledge, the confession of the church, and theological 
science. One cannot deny that there is great poverty of 
thought in the writings of Spener, Francke, and others. 
This is especially obvious in their sermons. That which 
Francke, Anton, Breithaupt, Lange, and others, who were 
professors of theology in universities, have accomplished 
in the domain of theological science, is of no great moment. 
While we stand with admiration before the works on syste- 
matic theology of the seventeenth century, even a his- 
torical interest is scarcely able to engage us in the works 
of the Pietistic divines. This scientific weakness is espe- 
cially visible in the Pietists of the second generation, the 
younger Francke, Callenberg, and others. In this indif- 
ference to doctrine was, of course, implied an indifference 
to the distinguishing doctrines of the Lutheran and Re- 
formed Churches. Pietism had, from the very outset, 
a tendency towards Union ; and that was not one of the 
weakest reasons why it was so much favoured by the 
princes of Brandenburg, especially by Frederick William 
I. While in Brandenburg it was prohibited to attend the 
University of Wittenberg, it was compulsory that every 
Lutheran divine should study at least two years in Halle. 
And, in like manner, as Pietism was indifferent to the 
confession of the church, it was indifferent to its constitu- 
tion and worship also. It was from the lap of Pietism 
that the congregational system came forth. The import- 
ance of public worship Pietism lowered by the value which 
it ascribed to its conventicles. It is in this indifference to 
confession, constitution, and public worship — these objec- 
tive bonds of Christian communion — that the fundamental 
error of Pietism came out : disregard of the Church and her 
ordinances. For, two things are essential to the Church : l 

1 According to the Lutheran doctrine.— Tr. 



3 02 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMIXISM. 

As the bearer of word and sacraments she is the mother 
of faith, and she is communion of faith, which must find 
an expression in confession, constitution, and worship. 
But both of these aspects of the Church Pietism neutralized 
by the exclusive stress which it laid on the conversion of 
the single individual. The orthodox theologians were 
right in seeing a Donatistic element in Pietism ; and, in 
general, he only who gives up the foundations of our 
Church can dispute to the orthodox theologian the right 
of opposition. It is a matter of course that we do not 
mean to identify ourselves with the coarse vehemence of 
men such as Mayer, Schelwig, Neumeister, Deutschmann, 
and others ; but it must not be forgotten that Pietism 
soon enough manifested a rather strong feeling of over- 
bearing superiority to orthodoxy. The discussions of 
Francke with Losher, a man by far superior to the Pietists 
in learning, and surely not destitute of practical Christi- 
anity, have, even upon Tholuck, 1 made the impression 
that Francke had acted with a feeling of superiority, and 
without understanding the difficulties of his opponent. 
By this opposition to the representatives of the doc- 
trine of the church, Pietism prepared the way for 11- 
laminism. The watchword of Pietism was — Practical 
Christianity. And it has displayed an extraordinary 
energy and activity. We would acknowledge, as it is 
due, the thousands of theologians who came came forth 
from Halle, the Orphan's Asylum (JVaisenhaus) at 
Halle, with all the good influences exerted by it, and 
all the good effects proceeding from it ; the voices of 
men such as Bogatzky, Schmolhe, Woltersdorf, the mis- 
sionaries to the heathen; but we would, on the other 
hand, not overlook the fact, that this resolving of all 
that is objective into practical efforts has contributed 
1 Der Geist der Lutherischen Theologen Wittenberg s, S. 308 ff. 



PIETIS^I. 103 

to usher in the utilitarian and moral tendencies of 
I/luminism. 

The middle part of the eighteenth century (from about 
1730 to 1770), is occupied with views which hear the cha- 
racter of transition. Let us first consider them in detail, be- 
fore we endeavour to determine their character as a whole. 
Although the orthodox theology of Pietism is, as early as in 
the second generation, broken, yet the impulses of Pietism 
pervade the whole century, and even go beyond it. By 
these, one school especially has been affected, the home, 
although not the exclusive seat of which is Wiirtemberg, 
and the representatives of which are Bengel, Crusius, 
Oetinger, Roos, etc. This school knows that it is related 
to the heads of Pietism ; like it, they wish for living, 
practical Christianity; they receive thoughts advanced by 
Pietism (e.g., Chiliasm) ; and yet they would not embrace 
the principle of Pietism. Bengel, who in his youth had, 
with a warm heart, considered the seed of Pietism in the 
north of Germany, says of the Pietists of the second 
generation : " It is true that the Halle generation has got 
rather too narrow for the spirit of our present time ; the 
dignity and seriousness of Spener does no more exist, and 
yet there is nothing to make up for it. Therefore the 
good men of that school should allow themselves to be 
stirred up a little, and accommodate themselves to the 
requirements of the present age." Zinzendorf also dis- 
avowed the Halle Pietists, " those miserable Christians 
whom no one calls Pietists, except themselves." He dis- 
liked the tormenting method by which they divided into 
different stages that which they called regeneration, among 
which repentance held a prominent place. What Zinzen- 
dorf wished was a joyful laying hold of the blood of 
Christ, for the communion of love with Him. 1 Yet this 
1 See the proofs in Schaaf.Die evangel. Briidergemeinde, S. 221, ff. 



104 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUM1XISM. 

is not the fundamental idea of Moravianism. Zinzendorf's 
u special plan," as lie himself calls it, was not to awaken, 
but to gather those who were awakened, into a commu- 
nion, in which the single souls might find careful attendance 
and pasture, and thus to realise Speners idea of an 
ecclesia in ecclesia. This idea was based upon the con- 
viction that the Evangelical Churches of the individual 
countries were given up to dissolution ; and yet Zinzendorf 
was anxious to vindicate, for the community of his elect 
ones, the authority and privileges of those very churches 
of which he had so low an opinion. The established 
church of Wurtemberg which, from the very beginning, 
had been less strict in her forms, and the heads of which, 
at that time, were affected with Pietism, gave to Zinzen- 
dorf ministerial ordination, and thereby a kind of sanction 
to his cause. To BengeL Zinzendorf appeared at that time 
as the prophet of his age. 1 The prophet was, no doubt, 
a witness against the corruption which was coming in upon 
the Church ; but, nevertheless, Ben gel could not approve 
of Zinzendorf's attempting a reconstruction so hastily. 
" I have," says he, " long ago said, that the separatists 
have combed asunder all the hair, and now Count Zinzen- 
dorf is beginning to plait pigtails. I think it is still rather 
premature. Lime and stone must first be prepared : and 
it is only then that we may begin to build." He disap- 
proved of the cavalier-like mode in which Zinzendorf dealt 
with the doctrine of the church. " It is not good that he 
introduces so novel a language, as if the systems and 
symbols of our Church were insufficient and unsuitable." 
Towards the end of his life, Bengel, in a special publica- 
tion, 2 pointed out the deviation of Moravianisni from 



1 Burk, D. A. Bengels Leben und Wirken, S. 379. 

2 Abriss der soyermanten Briidergemeinde, 1751. 



BEXGEL. 105 

Scripture and the symbolical books of the church. But 
how faithfully soever he adhered to the faith of his fathers, 
his relation to the symbolical books of the church was differ- 
ent from that of the orthodox divines of the seventeenth 
century. While with the latter their relation to Scripture 
had been brought about by the medium of the symbolical 
books of the Church, Bengel's relation to the symbolical 
books had been brought about through the medium of 
Scripture. With the former, agreement with the sym- 
bolical books of the Church was the beginning, — with him, 
the result ; and it is this direct proceeding from Scripture 
which characterises the class of theologians of which we are 
speaking. That which Bengel brought with him to Scrip- 
ture was a disposition which was from the first faithful, 
and which had not gone through opposite opinions, 
although it had passed through doubts and trials, — a 
disposition earnest, conscientious, and yet devout and 
affectionate. We might indeed call conscientiousness the 
fundamental virtue of Bengel. Whatever he utters, be it 
in science, be it in life, is more mature, more well weighed, 
more pithy, more consecrated, than most of what his 
verbose age has uttered. In the great he saw the little, 
in the little, the great. 

The theologians of the seventeenth century had not been 
disturbed in their strict views of inspiration by the dif- 
ferent readings ; in full belief they relied upon the teoctus 
receptus. But after the investigations of Walton, Fell, 
Mill, Bentley, and Wetstein, the fact could no longer be 
denied, that the authority of this textus receptus was acci- 
dental. While, to a man like Wetstein, this uncertainty 
of the text afforded a welcome and longed-for proof of his 
looser views on the Canon, it was to Bengel the cause of 
heavy trials. His endeavour was to remove, by a sure 
text, all objections ; and to this effect his critical studies 



106 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLOIIXISM. 

were devoted and made subservient. The principles 
which he followed in his criticism, have, as is well-known, 
introduced a new era in this territory. The exposition 
of the Xew Testament which he gave in his Gnomon, is 
thus characterised by himself: — K I shall add to the ori- 
ginal revised text exegetical remarks, in which I shall act 
neither as a s} T tematiser, nor as a controversialist, nor as 
an ascetic, etc., and yet, in a certain sense, I shall com- 
bine all these. Every single passage I shall explain ac- 
cording to its peculiar requirements : in the first instance, 
according to the words of the text themselves, and the 
connexion of the periods, or of the whole book, or of even 
the whole New Testament." In conformity with these 
principles, he listens to the text with philological impar- 
tiality, and, with wonderful skill, hears, not the funda- 
mental key-note only, but also the collateral tones, and, 
by his significant precision, stimulates to farther thinking. 
It was by his situation, as preceptor in the Monastic 
school (Klosterschule) at Denkendorf that Bengel found 
himself induced to undertake those critical, as well as 
exegetical labours. They are, just as his edition of 
Cicero's Letters ad familiar es, and of Chrysostom's book 
on the priestly office, fruits and memorials of his official 
conscientiousness. BengeFs disposition for precise inves- 
tigation of details carried him to chronology. Assisted 
by his chronological eye, he now imagined that he had 
attained to an understanding of the Revelation of John. 
Out of those mysterious pictures he composed the history 
of the kingdom of God with the assurance of an historian. 
History has refuted him. The 18th of June 1836, on 
which the Lord was to come (Rev. xix. 11-21), has 
passed; but although time has refuted his apocalyptic 
calculation, it has confirmed many of his glances into the 
future, and will yet, in all probability, confirm many 



BENGEL, CRUSIUS. 107 

more. Agreeing with Pietism. Bengel asserted the reality 
of the millennial kingdom, in opposition to the dislike 
with which orthodox theology had, from the very outset, 
viewed this point ; and from this position he transferred 
into the exposition of the prophetical portion of Scripture 
a realism which looked to a more literal fulfilment than 
the ordinary exposition admitted. — The school which 
Crusius in Leipzig represented, may well be designated 
by the name of a Philosophico-Biblical Realism. Not- 
withstanding all his originality, Crusius never denied the 
school of Bengel. Like Bengel, he was a Bible-theo- 
logian, and yet strongly addicted to the doctrine of the 
Church. Like Bengel, he brought to the study of Scrip- 
ture a living, humble faith, an earnest desire after holi- 
ness ; and he was of opinion, that, to such a disposition 
only, an understanding of Scripture would be opened up. 
But, while in Bengel a philological talent manifests itself, 
in Crusius it is a philosophical one. As a philosopher, 
Crusius maintained, in opposition to the idealism and 
mechanism of the Leibnitz- Wolffian Philosophy, a realism 
which brought spirit and body into an organic unity; 
while, as a Bible theologian, he maintained, in opposition 
to the spiritualism and mechanism of the exposition, the 
right of the letter and body, in the connexion of a history 
of salvation of the Old and Xew Dispensation organically 
developing itself. 1 While in Crusius the speculative ele- 
ment has the character of the rational, it has, in Oetinger, 
that of the Theosophical. It is only in modern times that 
this theologian, too, has been brought before us, especially 



1 The image of this theologian had become dim to the present 
age. Delitzsch, in his book : Die biblish-prophetische Theologie, 
ihre Fortbildung durch Chr. Crusius, etc., Leipzig, 1845, has ac- 
quired the merit of having him again, in due time, placed 
before us. 



1 08 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMIXISM. 

through the merit of Hamberger and Auberlen. It is a 
mixed impression, indeed, which the image of his life, 
drawn by himself, makes upon us. 1 His development, a 
retreat from the snowy regions of Wolffianism, leads 
through the misty lands of the intuition of Jacob Bolime, 
of central visionaries, of the alchymists, of Swedenborg. 
And then, after all, we are again attracted to this Magus 
of the South, by the wonderful life in prayer, by the mys- 
terious intercourse with a higher world, by his thoughtful 
living and moving in the mystery of Scripture. As the 
fundamental error of his tendency, there appears the dis- 
position to seek in Scripture proofs for views which he 
had found out without Scripture. Like Crusius, he as- 
sumed in every man an organ for truth, the sensus com- 
munis* — that which his age called common sense. When 
this proceeds from what exists, all being will represent 
itself to it as life ; but the sensus communis is not cog- 
nizant of the divine life. The divine life, the revelation 
of which is laid down in Scripture, opens up to the spiri- 
tual sense only. This spiritual sense is, in some elect 
ones, raised into an organ for higher, for new revelations. 
This mixture of practical philosophy, Christian specula- 
tion, and ghost-seeing, was then to be defended by Scrip- 
ture ! As long as we shall take in Scripture the words 
as they stand, we shall be obliged to confess, with the 
whole visible Church, the eternity of the punishments of 
hell; but theosophy could not agree with this thought. 
The school-rector Schill, Oetinger's godfather, a ghost- 
seer, had in vain endeavoured to convince prelate Oechslin 
of the restoration of all things. " The condemned shall 
go away into everlasting punishment" was too strong a 
text for him. But he had to suffer for it severely after 

1 Oetingers Selbsibiographie, edited by Dr J. Hamberger. 
Stuttg., 1845. 



OETINGEE. 109 

death. Schill was just going out of the door of the room 
when he heard, in a half whisper, the voice of Oeckslin, 
who addressed him by the word " Brother," and told him 
that, after death, he had come into a darkness in which 
he did not know what would befal him. Anguish and fear, 
therefore, fell upon him, because his conviction of the eter- 
nity of hell-torments was following him. He reproached 
Schill for not having, with the utmost pertinacity, endea- 
voured to reason him out of his opinion. He had passed 
a long time in his despair, until God had at length heard 
his prayer, and had made light to arise upon him, when 
he saw his error, and said, — " Oh, you theologians, how 
blind are you in the narrow sphere of your theses!" 1 
Swedenborg saw even more than Schill. He perceived 
Luther and Melanchthon in the condition of a kind of 
purgatory. Luther was teaching in a place which looked 
like Wittenberg, and Melanchthon was writing ; the 
former was teaching, and the latter was writing, " Justifi- 
cation by Faith." And yet the former is told that this 
doctrine was thoroughly false, and what the latter wrote 
is extinguished ; they are in purgatory on account of this 
doctrine, and refuse to acknowledge this. An angel, 
however, opens up to Swedenborg the prospect, that 
Luther would come right in the end. Who does not see, 
that the spirits which these enthusiasts saw were their 
own spirits, which would not submit to the word of Scrip- 
ture? Up to this day, Wurtemberg has remained the 
country of a living, but subjective piety. Bengel's spirit 
continues to live in those who, with a Christian conscien- 
tiousness, bring out of the Word of God doctrines which, 
although not agreeing with the systematical books of the 
Church, yet come very near them. (Beck may be viewed 

1 Selbstbiographie, S. SO ff. 



110 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMIXISM. 

as the representative of this class in the present ; while 
the great number of theosophists, ghost-seers, apoca- 
lyptics, prophets, etc., have their leader in Oetinger.) 

A second school of this transition period is the Wolffian. 
Wolff, consecrated, even before his birth, by his pious 
father, to the service of the Lord, devoted himself to 
mathematical and philosophical studies, in the belief that 
he would be able, by means of them, victoriously to de- 
monstrate the truth of Christianity. " Having been 
devoted to the study of theology by a vow. I also had 
chosen it for myself ; and my intention has all along been 
to serve God in the ministry, even when I was already 
Professor at Halle, until at length, against my will, I was 
led away from it, God having arranged circumstances in 
such a manner, that I could not carry out this intention. 
But having lived in my native place, Breslau, among the 
Catholics, and having perceived, from my very childhood, 
the zeal of the Lutherans and Roman Catholics against 
one another, the idea was always agitating my mind, 
whether it would not be possible so distinctly to show the 
truth in theology, as that it would not admit of any con- 
tradiction. When, afterwards, I learned that the Mathe- 
matici were so sure of their ground, that every one must 
acknowledge it to be true, I was anxious to study mathe- 
matics, methodi gratia, in order to give diligence to reduce 
theology to incontrovertible certainty." 1 If we consider, 
that in the last period of Protestant Scholasticism, the 
method of proceeding by definitions and demonstrations 
was very much in use (Seller zer, Hollaz) ; if we consider, 
that in the bosom of Pietism, which had arisen in opposi- 
tion to Scholasticism, the mathematical method was made 



1 Wuttke, Christian Wolff's eigne Lebensbeschreibnng (1S40), 
S. 120. 



WOLFF, 111 

use of by a man who afterwards took the lead in opposi- 
tion to Wolff, viz., Lange ;* we shall not. in this intention 
discover any unheard-of innovation. In Leipzig, where 
Wolff began his academical career, he now and then 
preached according to his method. u Z\ly sermons," he 
says. i; were liked, for this reason, that I endeavoured to 
explain the things by clear definitions, and always de- 
duced one from the other, drawing from the exposition of 
the text, first, conclusions theoretieas, and afterwards 
from them, practicas ; and in doing so, I always paid at- 
tention to the mo: nenta, and remedia, 
and led the proof, not only from dicta Scriptures, but also 
from the definition of the matters.'*' In Halle, Wolff at 
first taught mathematics, and afterwards physics, and 
philosophy also. His lectures obtained the greatest ap- 
plause ; whilst the Pietistic professors, who, in general, 
had never been very powerful in the chair, found great 
reason to complain of decreasing interest. From natural 
theology, which was a discipline of his rational philosophy, 
Wolff approached theology proper. Natural theology 
either infers from the world to God (cosmological argu- 
ment), or it proceeds from the idea of God (ontological 
argument). God is the Being absolutely necessary, i.e.. 
having His cause in Himself only (ens a se), in whom the 
world has its cause. He is the cause of the world as a 

1 In the same year in which Lange outwardly conquered ^Volff, 
there appeared his Causa Dei et religionis naturalis adversus 
Aiheismum (1723;, in which he proceeds throughout mathemati- 
cally, although, in the Preface, he assures us that the method is 
more logical than mathematical. " I have chosen a demonstra- 
tive method similar to the geometrical method of demonstration ; 
but it is determined, not so much by the laws of geometry, as 
by those of sound logic ; it is, therefore, not forced or affected, 
but a little more free, and rather flowing from the matter itself, 
than any imitation of geometry.*'" The method is, indeed, as 
stiff and absurd as in any TV oiifian. 



112 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMTNISM. 

willing Being. The will of God is determined according 
to the two principles of possibility (principbun contra- 
dictionis), and reality (principiw ',< svrjicicntis). 

Among innumerable worlds which were possible. God has 
produced that for which He had the best reason, i.e.. the 
best world. 1 In the universe. God wills, in the first in- 
stance, what corresponds to His perfection, and to that of 
the universe : secondly, that which is in accordance with 
the connexion of the universe or with the laws of nature. 
But for all that, he does not deny the truth of the revela- 
tion on which Christianity rests : only, that it must be 
possible to bring forward, from reason, criteria of revela- 
tion. As regards the matter of revelation, it must, at 
least upon the whole, not exist in the natural conscious- 
ness, — must not contradict the nature of God. — must be 
in accordance with the necessary truths of reason. — must 
not command or forbid anything which is in contradiction 
to natural law. As regards the form of revelation, it 
must be such as does not admit of a natural explana- 
tion, — it must, as much as possible, retain the powers of 
nature, — it must be communicated by intelligible signs. 2 
66 A specimen may be seen here/'' says Wolff, ironically, 5 
*•' of how dangerous my fundamental doctrines must be. 
because the very same doctrines follow from them which 
the pure doctrine of the Christian Church maintains." 
Wolff continues, that he acknowledged revelation, super- 
natural grace, miracles, etc.. only, that the representation 
of these points was the business of the theologia revelata. 



1 Yernunftige Gedaixken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele — 
Reasonable Thoughts of God, the Universe, and Soul— ^Halle, 
1747), S. 604. 

2 L. c, S. 623, ff. 

3 In the Anmerhungen zu den verrdriftioen Gedanken, etc. 
(Frankf., 1740), S. 614. 



WOLFF. 113 

and not of philosophy, which could not go any farther 
than it was possible to explain from reason. " I have 
always desired/' he says, " that theology and philosophy 
should not be mixed up with one another, although I 
am of opinion, that when one meets the truth in both 
of them, the one cannot contradict the other. For if 
theology would say nothing else than what Scripture 
teaches, and would not add that which Scripture does not 
say. — and if, on the other hand, philosophy would content 
itself with what can be proved from reason, the difference 
between natural and supernatural truth would more 
plainly appear, — the necessity of revealed religion, and 
its superiority to natural religion would be more easily 
seen, and much controversy, arising from philosophy being 
improperly introduced into theology, would be removed." 
In his life, too, Wolff showed a regard to the ordinances 
of the Church, which will not so readily be found in all 
so-called Christian philosophers of the present age. On 
an academical circular, which contained the resolution of 
an academical solemnity, Wolff wrote : — " Vicli, consentio. 
Yet as I have purposed to partake, on the same day? of 
the Lord's Supper, I do not know whether I shall be able 
to be present, inasmuch as I should not like to change my 
intention ; yet I will consider the matter with my minister. 
Chr. Wolff (1717.)" 1 The more the authority of Wolff 
increased in Halle, the more afraid did Francke and Lange 
become; they saw Atheism and corruption of manners 
springing up from Wolff's school. It is true, that they had 
no other proofs, except tales brought to them by students 
who adhered to them, and notes of lectures ; but who can 
say that those fears were groundless? They were not 
mistaken when they saw in Wolff a spirit rising — the spirit 
of Illuminism — which must endanger not only Pietism, 
1 Wuttke, S. 12. 

H 



114 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINISM. 

but Christianity in general. But it is a different ques- 
tion as to whether the representatives of that theology, 
which was anything but strict in reference to the autho- 
rities of the Lutheran Church, which had not despised an 
alliance with the Illuminist Thomasius, as long as it was 
aimed at orthodoxy, — whether they were in the right 
against a philosopher who professed to believe in revela- 
tion. The enmity, for a considerable time, showed itself 
only in petty academical conflicts, until a speech of Wolff, 
delivered on the occasion of his resigning the rectorship, 
and the subject of which was the excellence of Confucius' 
moral, induced Francke, who was at that time dean of the 
theological faculty, to ask from Wolff the manuscript of 
the speech. In a cutting letter, Wolff refused to give it 
up. The academical youth, by rather coarse demonstra- 
tions, declared against Lange. But the Pietists turned 
against Wolff a means, of which Wolff, it is true, had 
once availed himself in behalf of his own cause: they 
appealed to, and influenced the Court. Frederick Wil- 
liam I. issued a decree (of the 8th of November 1723) 
by which Wolff was deposed from his professorship, be- 
cause he was said to teach doctrines in opposition to the 
Word of God; and by which he was ordered to leave, 
within forty-eight hours, the Prussian territories, on pain 
of the gallows. Such a victory was, of course, a defeat 
to Pietism. Lange lived long enough to see that Wolff 
returned triumphantly to Halle (1740). Wolff's time 
too, was, however, gone; whilst he, who called himself 
Professor universi humani generis, continued, by writings, 
to influence the world, he yet could not obtain any real 
weight in his nearest sphere. We have seen (see p. 28 f.) 
what influence he had upon the general development; 
here, we are concerned about the movement which he 
called forth in the field of theolo^v. 



SCHOOL OF WOLFF. 115 

Like Wolff, the first considerable theologians of this 
school (Canz, Carpov, Ribov, Reusch, Baumgarten, 
Schubert, Reinbeck, and others), take also their stand on 
the ground of the symbolical books of the Church. In 
several of them we find serious Christianity ; only, that it 
was not, as in the case of that Wurtemberg school, 
the Christian sense, which strove to bring itself into 
harmony with the faith of the Church, but the under- 
standing ; they believed that they were able to support 
the mysteries of faith by arguments of the understanding. 
Carpov proved the necessity of the three persons in the 
Godhead, with mathematical certainty. It is true, that 
the belief in the force of their argument was not of any 
duration. Darjes, who once had demonstrated the Trinity 
in the same manner as Carpov, publicly recalled his book. 
Baumgarten, the most distinguished among the theolo- 
gians of this circle, was already cautious and moderate in 
the use of this method. He appears as a thoroughly 
mechanical head, in which piety, philosophy, and an im- 
mense amount of historical knowledge lay beside each 
other, as in strata. When, now and then, from among 
the learned dross, the silver metal of his individuality 
appeared, his affinity to Illuminism came to light. His 
protege was Sender, and it is he who tells us 1 that Baum- 
garten, when he was in good humour, could very zealously 
defend a Theist, and throw ridicule upon the whole theo- 
logy of his time. With those theologians who had gone 
through Wolff's school, such as Tollner, Ueilmann, J. P. 
Miller, and others, Wolff's method was lowered into a 
mere motive. But it is not the method only, but also the 
matter of the faith of the Church which has been lowered 
in these Semi-Wolffians. Wolff had demonstrated what 
man, by the light of nature, knows of God. This conces- 
1 Lebensbeschreibung, Th. I. S. 108. 



116 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMIXISM. 

sion, that our reason has an amount of religious truth 
within itself, theologians and philosophers, believing in a 
revelation, imagined that they were able to make, since 
the) T expressly declared that this natural light was not 
sufficient for salvation. " Should" — so Tollner now asks — 
" should this natural light, which enlightens every man, not 
be sufficient for salvation?" He answers, in two works, 1 
courageously in the affirmative, — ' But then, surely revel- 
ation in nature supersedes the revelation of Scripture ? ' 
" The revelation in Scripture," Tollner answers, " is a 
greater and more perfect means of salvation. Both the 
natural light, and revelation lead the man who follows them 
to salvation, Scripture only more so. " If Tollner had thus, 
on one hand, raised, as much as possible, natural religion 
to revelation, he, on the other hand, lowered Scripture 
to the level of natural light. According to orthodox 
doctrinal theology, Scripture is the word of God, not as 
modern theologians interpret, because Scripture contains 
the word of God, but because God is the real author 
(auctor primarius) of Scripture. The Spirit of God has 
written Scripture by the inspired holy writers. As soon 
as they are no longer viewed as the mere organs of God, 
but co-operate independently, and add of their own, the 
proposition, " God is the author of Scripture/' can no 
longer be maintained. However, even those theologians 
who, in other points, in opposition to the inroads of Theism, 
adhered with absolute submission to the word of Scripture, 
had felt the difficulties of the old doctrine of inspiration. 
Bengel distinguished degrees of inspiration. Crusias 

1 " Walire Grunde warum Gottdie Offenbarung nicht mitau- 
genscheinlichenBeweisenversehen hat" (True reasons why God has 
not furnished revelation with evident proofs, 1764); and "Beiceis, 
dass Gott die Mens c hen bereits durch seine Offenbarung in derXatur 
zur Seligheit fuhre" (Proof that God leads men to salvation, even 
by His revelation in nature — 1776). 



SCHOOL OF WOLFF. 117 

supposed an independent co-operation of the holy writers ; 
Pfaff would not even have excluded every error. 1 As 
free was the position of the Wolffian theologians to the 
doctrine of inspiration. Carpov would have it applied 
only to the objects of faith, not to human affairs mentioned 
in Scripture. Baimgarten reduced it to an influence 
which God exercises on the mental faculties of the holy 
writers. In the doctrine of Inspiration, the main stress, 
which once was laid on God, had thus fallen on the writers. 
According to the former view, man had a subordinate 
position only ; according to the latter, God. This result, 
Tollner, without the slightest hesitation, expressed in his 
work Die gottliche Eingebung (1771): " God" — so he 
says — " has in no way, either inwardly or outwardly, dic- 
tated the sacred books. The writers were the real authors, 
and, by applying their natural mental faculties, they pro- 
duced the thoughts and words which they wrote. God 
was employed in it directly (?), but it is impossible for us 
to determine where, and how far He was employed in it." 
We easily conceive that, in opposition to a theology so 
thoroughly infected by Illuminism, the popular philoso- 
phers of Wolff's school could consider themselves as the 
only rightful heirs of the master. 

A third school may be comprehended under the desig- 
nation of the historical school. After the zeal for confes- 
sions had been extinguished, and the impulse for doctrinal 
formation dried up, in the second half of the seventeenth 
century, it was natural that the position towards the matter 
of theology should become more historical. The precise, 
comprehensive, calm representation, which we meet with 
in Hollaz, can be accounted for only by the circumstance, 

i Bengel : Burk, S. 242, ff ; Crusius: Belitzsch, S. 69; Pfaff, 
De Praejudicatis opinionibus in Religione dijudicanda fugiendis } 
Hag. 1.1716. 



118 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINISM. 

that he was less of a contributor than an editor. The 
more that the tendency of the period was towards subjec- 
tive piety, the more does the historical point of view com- 
mend itself for all the objective formations of faith. In 
the doctrinal writings of Buddeus and Pfaff, the historical 
material drowns the already weakened thetical contents. 
The study of Church History was zealously cultivated by 
Ittig, Deyling, Korthold, Loscher, Weismann, and others, 
although very much with a regard to the matter. Who does 
not think of the historical masses which Walch in his in- 
dustry, has collected 1 It was Mosheim's task to give shape 
and form to this chaos of matter. In him, the former Helm- 
stadt divine, the spirit of the great Helmstadtian Calixi was 
revived. Having emancipated and enlarged his mind by 
classical studies, philosophy, and a knowledge of the world, 
Mosheim, as a historian, displayed an unprejudiced sym- 
pathy with facts, a refined and ingeniously combining 
pragmaticism, and an elegant, able, and classical style. 
The dark side of this talent — as regards the style — was 
a certain elegant superficiality. He has a very super- 
ficial view of the nature of the Church ; she is, according 
to him, a kind of State, whose development must therefore 
be represented like the history of a State. 1 His pragma- 
ticism gives the impression of the elegance of a man of the 
world, rather than of a statement of motives out of the 
depths of Christian experience. How mechanically, in his 
ethics, are the Christian and humanistic elements con- 
nected with one another ! His impartiality, his enlarged 
views, his liberalism, were, no doubt, connected with his 
views on the symbolical books of the Church, which he 
began already to regard in the light of a tradition. 

1 Baur, Die Epochen der Kirchlichen Geschichtsschreibung^ 
S. 126 : " The general defect of Mosheim's historiography is the 
externalization and secularization, or the generalization of the 
idea of the Church." 



MOSHEIM ; ERNESTI. 119 

'WhsdMosJieim was as a church historian. Ernesti became 
as an expositor of the New Testament. He was already a 
mature philologist when he was called to be a teacher of 
theology. In this, his theological character is expressed ; 
he was a theological philologist ; and hence Ernesti's 
importance is expressed in the principle that Scripture 
must be explained purely philologically. This principle 
was not announced by Ernesti for the first time ; Wetstein 
had advanced it much more distinctly, and carried it out 
with much greater power. Wetstein' s New Testament — 
that storehouse so incredibly drawn upon — was to prove, 
not only the formal, but also the material likeness of 
Scripture and profane literature. But from Ernesti, who 
held so elegant a middle ground between orthodoxy and 
neology, the age would rather receive the principles of the 
so-called grammatico-historical exposition, than from the 
Arminian, who, according to the average measure of that 
time, went rather too far. Crushes and Ernesti were now 
teaching together in Leipzig ; they could not fail to come 
in contact with each other, and between this opposition 
their hearers could not but divide themselves. Against 
Crusius' exposition, deep indeed, but yet mixed up with 
his own thoughts, Ernesti maintained the right of objec- 
tivity, while Crusius was not wrong in viewing this 
objectivity in connection with humanistic superficiality. 
" This conflict of learned opinions," says Teller, in his 
work " On Ernesti's Merits (S. 13)," " has certainly some 
advantage, were it not that the sparks flying about too 
easily kindle the fire of human passions. Crusius groaned 
with a touching earnestness, or mocked with a cutting 
smile, quite peculiar to him, over the profanity and deis- 
tical evils. Ernesti scolded in a contemptuous manner, 
and mocked with bitter humour, over ignorance and 
visionary tendencies. Thus both of them poured upon 



120 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINISM. 

their numerous hearers the spirit of discord and sectarian 
zeal/' Ernesti was animated by the spirit of the age, 
which was rapidly tending towards Illuminism ; but Illu- 
minism soon went beyond him. When he died (1781), 
his school, too, w T as dissolved. " The school of Crushes, 
writes Jean Paul, who at that time studied at Leipzig. 
" has almost died with its founder. People are, in 1781, 
too much embued with the spirit of Illuminism to be able 
to be out and out Crusites ; at least they are too wise to 
tell it. Not altogether, but nearly the same, is the case 
wdth Ernesti's school. Ernesti spoke Ciceronian Latin, 
but wanted Cicero's eloquence. He had good Latin words, 
but not very bright thoughts. With poor faculties of 
mind, he was astonishingly learned ; but he owed his glory 
more to his industry than to his genius, more to his 
memory than to his depth. He was a great philologist, 
but not a great philosopher. The information which you 
want me to give you about the holy orthodoxy of Leipzig, 
will be very short. Most, almost all, the students, incline 
towards the side of Heterodoxy. Morus is evidently not 
orthodox : he has already suffered many persecutions (?) : 
and it is just this which makes him cautious. Wherever 
he can explain away a miracle, the devil, etc., or can 
change an allegory from the Old Testament into an accom- 
modation, he does so. In his systematic theology, on 
which he lectures exceedingly well, he brings the r disputed 
points, the opinions of opposite parties, in such a manner 
before his hearers, that he leaves the decision to them ; 
and who would, from the strength of his arguments on the 
one side, not infer which is his real opinion?" Those 
principles of a grammatico-historical interpretation, which 
Ernesti represented on the New Testament territory, were 
in a more thorough going manner applied to the Old 
Testament territory by J. D. Micliaelis. Being the son 



J. D. MICHAELIS. 121 

of an orthodox theologian, he allowed much of the belief 
of the Church to stand. He held the necessity of a revela- 
tion ; found it in Scripture ; admitted miracles and pro- 
phecies ; acknowledged the divinity of Christ, a kind of 
original sin, and satisfaction for our sins. But all these 
stood, so to speak, as some old gates and walls in razed 
fortresses. Revelation is to him, after all, substantially a 
confirmation of natural religion : the authority of Scrip- 
ture he proved by miracles, prophecies and arguments for 
their genuineness and authenticity. As is well known, 
Michaelis confessed openly that of the testimony of the 
Holy Spirit, and in general of supernatural grace, he had 
never felt any thing. It cannot, according to him, be in 
any way supposed that the Gentiles, who, without their 
fault, could not have heard any thing of faith, should not 
be saved. One must read this chapter in his book itself, 1 
in order to get some notion of the spiritless and thoroughly 
coarse manner in which Michaelis set aside such mysteries. 
In the same way he treats the Mosaic legislation also, in 
his principal work. He thinks that he can throw a very 
ckar light over Moses, by making him, according to the 
policy of his time, so far as it was within the reach of a 
Gottingen professor, a very clever statesman, whose chief 
skill consisted in rendering matters of utility acceptable 
by religious motives. If Moses, in the name of God, for- 
bids to seeth a kid in his mother's milk, he has only 
availed himself of a pious artifice to ^are for the palate of 
the Jews ; for the kids of goats taste better when boiled 
in olive oil than in butter. 2 The completion of this his- 
torical school, which forms the transition to Illuminism, 
is Semler. Many a parallel presents itself between him 

1 J. D. Michaelis, Dogmatik, S. 420, ff, (2d edition.) 

2 For particulars, couip. Hengstenberg, Authenticity of the 
Pentateuch, I. p. xiii. seq. 



122 THE THEOLOGY OF ELLUMDTCSM. 

and Michaelis, although, in life they rather repulsed each 
other, Both had gone through the school of pietism : 
both had sober, unimaginative natures : both possessed 
extensive historical knowledge : and both were as histori- 
cal as possible as regards the faith of the Church. Of 
Pietism, which, according to his own confession, he had 
adopted from external considerations, Sender retained not 
only a certain personal piety (the same may be said of 
Michaelis also), but also the characteristic distinction 
between private religion and public religion, or the doc- 
trine of the Church. Religion is essentially the business 
of the individual: and since individuals are so different, 
private religion also will assume very different forms. But 
religion is also the business of the community : and with- 
out a distinct doctrine no religious community can be 
imagined. That is public religion. Xow, as the religious 
community, at different times, and under different circum- 
stances, is very different, the form of public religion will 
always be very different too. This public religion stands 
to private religion in a relation more or less external. 
Satisfied with that in which he found his private religion, 
he looked with purely historical eyes on the different forms 
of religious life. Since these forms stand in so external a 
relation to private religion, all liberty of criticism may 
prevail in their historical examination. The grammatico- 
historical examination of Ernest*, to whom Sender was 
attached with great veneration, yet allowed many things 
to stand with which Sender's private religion could not 
agree. Here, then, his historical stand-point assisted him. 
From the substance of Christianity must be stripped off every 
thing which is local and temporary : but as such Sender 
viewed all the specific doctrines of Christianity, even the 
idea of the kingdom of God. The difficulty offered by the 
question: How was it that Christ, that the Apostles, could 



semler. 123 

lay such stress on subordinate matters ? — this difficulty he 
removed on the principle of accommodation, of which he 
made the most extensive use. After Semler had thus cleared 
the territory of the canons, he did all that he could, in order 
to remove the halo which rested on the first centuries, 
With an incredible boldness, he declared books, the ge- 
nuineness of which no one had hitherto doubted, not to be 
genuine, or, at least, to be highly doubtful. Under his 
pragmatical touches the halo of the martyrs faded : upon 
the heads of esteemed teachers of the Church, such as 
Augustine, he discharged destructive strokes. And thus 
the history of the kingdom of God became, under his 
hands, a world of atoms, which crossed each other as 
chaotically as the masses of notices which lay heaped up 
in the memory of Sender. 1 

1 Tholuck, iu his Treatise, Abriss einer Geschichte der Umwiil- 
zung, welche seit 1750 aufdem Gebiete der Theologie in Deutschland 
stattgefunden hat — Sketch of a History of the revolution, which, 
since 1750, has taken place on the territory of Theology in 
Germany. — {Verm. Schriften, II. S. 39, ff) has given a good con- 
tribution to the characteristics of Semler. Many points, however, 
are, as it appears to me, not rightly viewed. If Tholuck finds 
the fundamental feature of Senders character in his sanguine 
disposition, an occasional expression of Semler, in his autobio- 
graphy, appears to me to be a very precarious proof. " Semler "s 
studies were sanguine, because he took up first this, and then 
that,'" says Tholuck. To me. however, the variety of Sender's 
studies seems to have arisen from the external manner with 
which he received within himself the objects of knowledge. He 
who aims at the knowledge of the objects as such, can, for that 
very reason, throw himself into territories the most diverse. I 
do not believe that a man of a sanguine temperament would 
have been able so thoroughly to study the sources as Sender has 
done. Xo man of a sanguine temper will have sufficient perse- 
verance ever anew to engage in the same studies, as Semler has 
done, e.g., in his investigation of the first centuries. " A man 
of a sanguine temper is pre-eminently vain. Semler, also, with 
all the energy of his nature, is only bent upon succeeding, as a 
youth, with ladies; as a man. with the public," — Tholuck goes on 



124 THE THEOLOGY OF 1LLUMINISM. 

If we take a summary review of all the schools described, 
it is on the one hand obvious, that by a certain attach- 
ment to the doctrines and ordinances of the Church, they 
differ from Pietism ; but, on the other hand, that this 
attachment to the doctrine of the Church is no more that of 
the age of orthodoxy. They seek to compromise, in refer- 
ence to the doctrine of the Church, the authority of which 
is already broken. While that Wurtemberg school recon- 
ciles it with a faithful and speculative interpretation of 
Scripture, and the school of Wolff with their demonstra- 
tion, the Historical School supports it by historical 
arguments. But these props soon prove insufficient to 
bear the burden imposed upon them ; if these supports 
are to stand and hold, the doctrine of the Church must 
be made lighter. But, when demolition once began, it was 
difficult to say where and when it should stop. Thus, 
then, at last, the old firm citadel had become a little airy 
villa which could scarcely serve for show. And should 
such a little villa have been able to hold out before an 
enemy who already occupied the whole land ? Against 
little advanced posts — such as Dippel, Edelmann, and 
others — they had held their ground; with Bahrdt, whose 
artillery was too light, they had succeeded in a creditable 
way ; the assault of the Wolf hibiittel Fragments was, it is 
true, repelled, but it left wide breaches behind. When 
now Illuminism marched on in well-disciplined troops, i.e., 
as Rationalism, no farther resistance was to be thought 
of; it entered, with flying colours. 



to say. Unless Tholuck have had official sources of information 
regarding the first point, besides Sender's autobiographj', I must 
confess that in it I could find nothing of it. And, as regards 
vanity with the public, I am disposed to think that this fault is 
not to be found with sanguine men only. People say that it is 
by no means rare among authors. 



KNUZEH. 125 

In isolated and strange forms, Illuminism announced 
itself on the field of theology. 

In 1674, ten tracts were found in the Parochial Church 
of Jena, by the side of the professorial pews ; the first a 
colloquy between an innkeeper and three guests, of different 
religions ; the second, a conversation between a military 
chaplain, called Dr Henry Brummer, and a Latin 
Clerk ; a third was sent into the house of the librarian 
Xeuenhaas, along with the following letter : — " Ho- 
noured Sir, we hereby inform you that there are at 
Jena certain people, 700 in number, partly citizens, partly 
students, who are addicted to the doctrine of which the 
inclosed colloquy (the first of the tracts mentioned) treats. 
We desire you to insert this colloquy in the newspaper as 
soon as possible (Xeuenhaus was editor of a newspaper), 
else to speak in your own language, inasmuch as death 
is a sleep, we shall lull you asleep in the open street, by 
means of an air-gun. Farewell, and retain in your regard 
him who warns you, John Frederick of Reason." This 
strange circumstance caused sensation. Xo trace of 
the 700, however, was found at Jena ; and thus there 
was every reason to doubt the existence of the number- 
less adherents of those views in the capitals of Europe, 
of whom these tracts boastingly spoke. After some time, 
that strange man once more made his appearance in 
Jena, in order afterwards to appear for ever. He was 
the wandering preacher, Matthew Knuzen, from Holstein, 
who sometimes assumed the title of M.A., sometimes of 
a licentiate of Theology ; but wheresoever he was asked 
for the documents of these dignities, he always pre- 
tended that he had lost them by some unlucky acci- 
dent. What he taught was an apotheosis of conscience. 
" There is no God, no devil, no life after death ; not 
Scripture, but conscience alone is the rule of truth ; the 



126 THE THEOLOGY OF JLLUMINISM. 

Bible is a confused, dull, and stupid book, Since such 
is the case, no one can call it wrong that I and my num- 
berless adherents at Paris. Amsterdam, etc., consider the 
whole Bible to be nothing but a fable, to which those 
blockheads, the Christians, please to surrender their 
reason, in order thus, with reason, to be unreasonable and 
foolish. What satisfies us conscientiarii is not that 
which one knows, but that which many know, the common 
knowing (conscientia conjunction accepta). Thus we walk 
safely, and certainly. This conscience, which our kind 
mother has equally implanted in all, is our Bible, and 
takes with us the place of the secular government, and of 
the clergy. This conscience, when we do evil, is to us 
more than a thousand tormenters : and when we do good, 
it is our heaven. This conscience is born with our birth, 
and dies with our death. These are principles co-existent 
with us ; he who rejects them rejects himself.'"' Knuzen's 
life still falls into the period of orthodoxy, and one of its 
noblest representatives, Musaeus, in Jena, opposed these 
1 views. 1 

Into the age of Pietism falls John Conrad Dippel 
(born 1673, died 1734). He belongs to those chaotic 
natures that delight in an eternal struggle with the exter- 
nal world, because they have not the power of controlling 
themselves. He throws himself from one science into 
another ; here he is a theologian ; there he appears as a 
physician ; to-day he is an alchymist ; to-morrow a philo- 
sopher. From one university he proceeds to another; 
from prison he passes to high dignities, in order to step 
back from them to prison. He is in an eternal warfare. 
The pietistic tendency of his time had seized him, too ; 
but instead of being in earnest, and attending to his inner 

1 See Studien und Kritiken, 1844, ff IV. S. 969 ff. 



DIPPEL . EDELMANN . 127 

man, he now imagines that he is entitled to wage war with 
orthodoxy. 1 Under the name Christicmus Democritus, 
he attacks not only the orthodox theologians of his time, 
but also the doctrine of the Church. We saw above, 
(p. 99 ff.), that Pietism differed in principle from the doc- 
trine of the Church ; that it changed the word of Scrip- 
ture into devotion ; Christ for us, into Christ in us. It 
is in this path that Dippel boldly advanced. The word 
of God is something altogether different from the word of 
Scripture. It is not by the dead letter, but directly, that 
the Spirit of God speaks to the spirit of man; and it is 
not the outward merit of Christ which saves man, but that 
which the Christ in us works. The word of Scripture, 
Christ's work of salvation, are thus resolved into the 
subjective spirit. In this subjective spirituality, Dippel 
divests of all their significance and importance, the Sacra- 
ments, the ministerial office, the visible Church and its 
orders, the Confession, and theological science. But 
although Dippel imparted into Christianity a circle of 
gnostic and theosophic ideas, yet he pretended to be a 
Christian ; which Edelmann did not. 

He has himself described to us part of his life. 2 He 
was the son of pious parents, enjoyed in theology the 
instructions of Buddeus in Jena, and led a blameless life 

1 Klose, J. K. Dippel (Xiedners Zeitschrift, 1851, S. 467 ff.) cha- 
racterizes him thus: " Dippel was learned, eloquent, cheerful ; 
his satire was sharp, and he knew well how to find out what was 
wrong in the Church ; but he was full of conceit, and forward in 
his judgments. The enlightenment of the understanding, and 
the pulling down of prejudices, he had far more at heart than 
religion, and, for this reason, it was a destructive influence only 
which he exercised upon the Church. 

2 Joh. Chr. Edelmann s autobiography, written 1752, edited bv 
Dr K. R. IF. Klose, Hamb. 1851. For the doctrines and life of 
Edelmann is still of importance : Pratje, Historische Xachrichten 
von Edelmann s Leben. etc. Hamburg, 1755. 



128 THE THEOLOGY OF LLLUMTNISM. 

during the time in which he was tutor in families in Austria 
and Saxony. Whatever may have been the repulsive power 
which, on one hand, was exercised upon him by dead ortho- 
doxy, and, on the other hand, by the sickly, and partly im- 
pure working of Pietism in Herrenhut and Wetteravia, — 
whatever it may have been, and however high we may 
estimate it, we cannot account by it for the wicked height 
of opposition, not only against the Lutheran Church, 
but against Christianity in general, to which he soon pro- 
ceeded. Of some influence upon him was Dippel (his 
relation to him he states in the eighth colloquy, in his 
TJnschuldige, Wahrheiten and Knuzen), whose attacks 
upon Scripture he made use of almost word for word. 
After many restless wanderings, he at length found a 
settled abode at Berlin. He, too, was benefitted by the 
toleration of Frederick II. The king is affirmed to have 
said : People should not wonder at his tolerating Edel- 
niann in his territories, inasmuch as he was obliged to 
tolerate many other fools. Where men like Voltaire, 
d'ArgenSi de la Mettrie* were gathering together, there 
were carcases for this bird of prey also. It is true that 
him, at least, Frederick did not admire ; he had the bold- 
ness, but not the grace of the Berlin Frenchmen; yet he 
did not want admirers, and, supported by them, he lived 
till 1767. What Edehnann wished was nothing new; 
after the manner of all adherents of Ilhuninism, he wished 
to reduce all positive religions to natural religion. The 
positive heathenish religions stand, to him, on a level with 
Judaism and Christianity. He is more just towards 
Heathenism than towards Judaism, and more just towards 
Judaism than towards Christianity. Every thing positive 
in religion is, as such, superstition. Christ was a mere 
man, whose chief merit consists in the struggle against 
superstition. What He taught, and what he was anxious 



EDELMANN. 129 

for, no one^ however, may attempt to learn from the New 
Testament writings, inasmuch as these were forged so late 
as the time of Constantine. All that which the Church 
teaches of His divinity, of His merits, of the gracious 
influence of the Holy Spirit, is absurd. There is no other 
rule of truth but reason, and it manifests its truths directly 
by a peculiar sense. Whatever this sense says is true. 1 
It is this sense which perceives the world. The reality of 
every thing which exists, is God. In the proper sense there 
can, therefore, not exist any atheists, because everyone who 
admits the reality of the world, admits also the reality 
of God. God is not a person, — least of all are there three 
persons in God. If God be the substance in all the 
phenomena, then it follows of itself that God cannot be 
thought of without the world, and hence that the world 
has no more had an origin than it will have an end. One 
may call the world the body of God, the shadow of God, 
the Son of God. The Spirit of God is in all which 
exists. It is ridiculous to ascribe inspiration to special 
persons only ; every one ought to be a Christ, a prophet, an 
inspired man. The human spirit, being a breath of God, 
does not perish ; our spirit, separated from its body by 
death, enters into a connection with some other body. 
Thus Edelmann taught a kind of metempsychosis. What 
he taught had been more thoroughly and ingeniously said 
in France and England ; but from a German theologian, 
and that with such eloquent coarseness, with such a 
mastery in expatiating in blasphemy, such things were 
unheard of. But, as yet, the faith of the Church was a 
power in Germany. While few voices only declared 
publicly for Edelmann, there arose a whole literature of 

1 Pratje is certainly right, if, in this, he perceives the formal 
principle of Edelmann's doctrine S. 142. 

I 



130 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMENISM. 

refutations ; ! and in Hamburg, and Frankfort, the execu- 
tioner interposed, against his writings, with fire, in the 
name of a Christian magistrate. 

If the teachers of the Church are to be known by their 
fruits, he who is able to form an impartial opinion, will be 
compelled to admit that the life of these adventurers does 
not speak for their cause. There is not much of reason 
in these knight-errants of reason ; the confusion in 
their views, however, is essentially connected with the 
condition of the world in their time. A remarkable 
barometer of the change of the time is presented by the 
life of a similar adventurer, the notorious Charles 
Frederick Bahrdt (born 1741, died 1792). Like Edel- 
man?i } he has himself described his life, and he has done 
so partly by being, like him, urged to speak of his person, 
partly in order to vindicate himself, and partly from 
anxiety for the opinion of posterity, 2 for ail these enlight- 
eners imagined themselves to be men of the future. 

Bahrdt was a most fertile writer; he enumerated 126 
publications in his autobiography. The most important 
of these, however, have found their way into, and exerted 
their influence upon, the circles of the educated in general, 
rather than those of theology. In the theological terri- 
tory, he has not produced anything either new or important, 

1 One may see the list of refutations, got up long before 
Edelmami's death, in Pratje, S. 205, ff. 

2 The idea which Edelmann entertained of his importance in 
after times, is quite incredible. In his biography, he writes 
that he would be remembered as long as there existed a leaf of 
modern Church History. Bahrdt, in the History of his Life, 
Opinions, and Fortunes (4 volumes. Berlin^lTQl), has the follow- 
ing words printed below his likeness : — 

Hie ego qui adauxi rationis luce coaevos, 

Centenis carus, denis a millibus ictus : 

Heu ! seriora dabunt negatas saecula grates. 



BAHRDT. 131 

and it is not so much his theory, as his life, which is charac- 
teristic of his time. His life is the tragical result of two 
agents ; of a condition of the world which had more the 
appearance than the reality of the old faith, and of a 
character into which Illuminism fell as a spark of fire into 
powder. In the house of his father, who was Superintend- 
ent and Professor of Theology in the University of Leip- 
zig, as well as in the College of Pforta, and in the Univer- 
sity of Leipzig, the old Lutheran faith still prevailed. But 
the old discipline, at least, did no more exist in his father's 
house. Pforta was the seat of a low, fagging system, and 
of secret sins ; and at Leipzig, in the lectures of his father, 
Bahrdt did not get acquainted with the faith of the 
Church in its old vigour. 1 

At that time the Leipzig Theological Faculty was 
divided by the conflict between Crusius and Ernesti, of 
which we have spoken on a previous occasion. Bahrdt. 
a youth of fifteen years, took up in the lectures just what 
pleased his fancy. In his rash way, he surrendered him- 
self without reserve, to the views of Dr Crusius. The 
boy could not understand the philosophy, far less the 
theology of the man. To the former he was attracted 
by the clearness, to the latter by the touch of enthusiasm 
which is so alluring to sanguine tempers ; for Bahrdt 

1 A pretty clear light is thrown upon the character, and the 
theological sentiments of Bakrdfs father, by his letters to his 
son (edited by Pott), Th. I., S. 275, ff. He tells plain truth to 
his son, but throws greater blame upon his moral, than upon his 
theological defects. He inculcates upon him circumspection and 
caution. " With all the reform in the system of doctrines, we 
must always look with cautious prudence to the peace and safety 
of the Church, and our own preservation " (S. 296). In the doc- 
trine of Justification (S. 298), of the Lord's Supper (S. 300), he 
deviates from the doctrine of the Church. The manner in which 
he judges of Ernesti (S. 234), and of Crusius (S. 304), does not 
make a favourable impression. 



132 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINIS3I. 

was thoroughly sanguine. Vanity and a violent temper 
were, as he himself confesses, peculiar to him from his 
youth : and these are well-known symptoms of sanguine 
natures. He himself adduces a horrible instance of his 
violence. When his father had, upon one occasion, re- 
proved him in severe terms, he put loaded pistols on his 
table with the intention of injuring him. Whatever he 
undertook, he brought into connection with his vanity ; 
to the streets he offered a sight of his elegance ; in 
disputations he showed off his fluent, though by no 
means elegant Latin ; and the pulpit was to him an arena 
for rhetorical exhibitions, in which, as it appears, his 
parents too rejoiced more than was right. While scarcely 
a youth, at all events still, according to his own confes- 
sion, an ignoramus, Balirdt occupied the academical chair. 
It was a triumph to the vain man to see his former col- 
lege-fellows from Pforta sitting at his feet. While the 
son was declaiming, the father was listening at the door, 
in order, at the close, to bring to the teacher a classified 
list of the blunders against grammar, exegesis, and syste- 
matic theology. With violence and vanity, love of ma- 
terial pleasures early connected itself. Bahrdt not only 
formed one liaison after another, but was by the flesh 
soon led to worthless women ; and that came out in a 
very offensive manner. What a disgrace to the parents, 
who had hitherto been dreaming only of their son's vic- 
torious progress ! According to the well-known proverb, 
the dissolute Rlotz. who had hitherto only ridiculed the 
academic boy, associated with Bahrdt, and, by his media- 
tion, he got a call to Erfurt. This university, in whose 
beautiful arrangements her greatest son, Luther, had once 
rejoiced, had at that time become, by those very arrange- 
ments, a caricature. The Elector ofMayence, an enlightened 
ecclesiastical prince, was anxious to raise it by celebrated 



BAHRDT. 133 

names ( Wieland), and by the infusion of young and fresh 
abilities. If Bahrdt had repented, he might, by the help 
of God, have obtained an honourable position in the new 
sphere. He was not deficient in talent ; he was of quick 
perception, of great adroitness in his mode of represen- 
tation, of a sharp and penetrating eye. He could easily 
take up and enter into everything. But the spirit of 
levity, which accompanied him from Leipzig to Erfurt, 
made him take up his office, not according to the mind of 
God, whose hand he recognised in this call, but according 
to the mind of the man through whose influence he had 
obtained it, viz., Klotz. Following his directions, he 
formed connections with men and circles who could not 
fail to drag him down still more deeply. Professor 
Riedel, w T ho held up as genius and wit the unrestrained 
boldness with which he broke through all social forms, 
once introduced him with the words : " Here you have the 
rake-hell/' into a circle of which Bahrdt himself must 
confess that it was unequalled in impudence and licen- 
tiousness. Of even a noble nature the spirit of frivolous 
lust may take hold in an evil hour, but Bahrdt was of a 
low nature. He was unfit for any true idea, for any en- 
thusiasm, for any self-denying sacrifice — a worthy repre- 
sentative of the utilitarian principle of his time. " Never/* 
says he of himself, " have I loved with passion." In his 
marriage projects, he was always guided by the desire of 
obtaining a large fortune. But as it happens to many 
who are anxious to get rich, so it happened to him also ; 
he did not find what he was seeking ; but here also God 
made good what Bahrdt had made evil. He gave to 
Bahrdt what he had not sought, viz., a virtuous woman. 
To obtain money was the main impulse in every book 
which he wrote ; and this he declares as openly, as if it 
were nothing but a matter of course. Such motives 



134 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLU3HNISM. 

even lay at the foundation of the dedications of his writ- 
ings. After he had given up this means of making 
money (so he himself tells us), because it never had the 
wished-for success, he at length succeeded in obtaining for 
the dedication of his " Neueste Offeribarungen" (Newest 
Revelations) a chest of old Steinwein 1 from the Prince- 
Bishop of Wurzburg, whom, through some mediator, he 
had persuaded that he was considering some important 
steps, by which the prelate could only understand his 
joining the Roman Church. A man so thoroughly frivol- 
ous, low, and superficial, could, in a former age, have 
dragged on the doctrine of the Church, just as many an 
orthodox had done ; but in the age of Illuminism it was 
not only permitted, but considered a matter of honour to 
allow one's own heart and understanding to give their 
opinion » 

From Crusius, Bahrdt went over to Ernesti. A new 
light, so he confesses himself, rose upon him, viz., the con- 
viction that Scripture must be explained differently 
from what hitherto theology had done. But this convic- 
tion does not as yet lead him to a rupture with the doc- 
trine of the Church. He. at that time, only thought that 
the doctrine of the Church must be placed on a different 
foundation. "From that very hour I dismissed my 
Crusius. I no longer cared about his warnings against 
the letter (so he called philology). I now studied with 
indefatigable industry, history and languages. And 
although I continued to hold by the fundamental articles 
of our system, yet there was now laid within me the im- 
moveable foundation of unbelief, and my conversion was 
accomplished. For, a man who has once resolved to test 
the theology of the Church, and to bring it to the touch- 

1 A superior Franconian wine. 



BAHRDT. 135 

stone of reason and philology, can no longer continue 
in that creed." 1 In Erfurt it was soon known that the 
young philosopher expressed in his lectures free opinions 
on Scripture, the symbolical books, the doctrine of origi- 
nal sin, etc. The ministry consulted the theological 
faculties of Wittenberg and Gottingen about Bahrdt's 
mode of teaching. But in a formal point of view he was 
right ; and considering what was already at that time 
going on in the Church, not much could be said against 
the position which he took up. His position at that time 
was the same as that of those theologians of transition, 
of whom we have spoken supra, of Tollner, Heilmann, 
Miller, Michaelis, Seller, and others. It was in the sense 
of this mongrel school, about the tenableness of which 
he afterwards judged very correctly, that he began his 
"Biblical system of doctrine," 1768. Notwithstanding 
this conviction, he might have continued to teach without 
obstruction, if, by his bold, provoking, and scoffing man- 
ner, the stricter school had not been driven into opposition. 
He had to consider it as a very fortunate circumstance, 
that a call to a Professorship of Theology in Giessen de- 
livered him from the conflict in Erfurt. The reputation 
of being a dangerous Neologist had gone before him; but, 
by a cleverly calculated pulpit, eloquence he knew how to 
dissipate it. "Dr Bechtold," so he tells us (Leben ii., 
S. 146) " had given me to understand that my orthodoxy 
was rather suspected by the congregation. This induced 
me to give to the sermon such an aspect as would destroy 
this suspicion. And it is well known what is required 
for such a purpose. You need only to use very frequently, 
a la Lavater, the name of Jesus, and the great mass will 
be convinced that you teach sound Christianity." In 

1 Leben, I. S. 279, 



136 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINISM. 

Giessen, Balirdt became more and more an epicurean 
man of the world, who, without being intellectually idle, 
yet, with tobacco, wine, gambling, merry parties, equi- 
pages, a splendid house, etc., made life as charming to 
himself as possible ; but the more he became at home in 
the world, the more he became a stranger to the doctrine 
of the Church. " I came to Giessen," he says (Leben, 
II., S. 199) as yet very orthodox. My belief in the divinity 
of the Scriptures, in the direct mission of Jesus, in His 
miraculous history, in the Trinity, in the gifts of grace, 
in natural corruption, in justification of the sinner by 
laying hold of the merit of Christ, and especially in the 
whole theory of satisfaction, seemed to be immoveable. 
It was only the manner in which three persons were to be 
in one God, which had engaged my reason. I had only ex- 
plained to myself a little better the work of the Holy Spirit, 
so as not to exclude man's activity. I had limited a little 
the idea of original sin ; and in the doctrine of the atone- 
ment and justification, I had endeavoured to uphold the 
value of virtue, and had cleared myself from the error 
that God, in His grace, should not pay any regard at all to 
human virtuous zeal. That in the doctrine of the Lord's 
Supper I was more Reformed than Lutheran, will be sup- 
posed as a matter of course." The first doctrine which 
Bahrdt gave up was the doctrine of the Trinity ; Christ 
became to him a God-inspired man, and the Holy Spirit 
a mere power. He clung for a long time to the doctrine 
of the atonement ; there was too much in Scripture which 
seemed to him to favour it. He greatly rejoiced, however, 
at the discovery that that which the Church taught re- 
garding the merit of Christ, the laying hold of it, His 
vicarious sufferings, imputation, etc., was not biblical. 
But then a naturalistic theologian, who passed through 
Giessen, pointed out to him that the sacrificial death of 



BAHRDT. 137 

Christ did not give any comfort which could not be 
afforded equally by confidence in an all-loving God, and 
thus succeeded in destroying Bahrdt' s belief in the satis- 
faction of Christ. One is quite astonished that, upon 
such superficial argumentation (see Leben, II., S. 210, ff.), 
Bahrdt gave up the doctrine. With this conclusion of his, 
Scripture must, of course, agree, whether it would or not ; 
and now Bahrdt' s most urgent business was to proclaim 
to the world this great discovery. Yet fear of his ene- 
mies prevented him from publishing the book. From a 
desire to make Scripture of no avail to orthodoxy (as 
Bahrdt expresses himself), proceeded his translation of 
the New Testament. 1 This translation called forth 
Gothe's well known satire. But it was even more than a 
sin against good taste. Gbze, in a special pamphlet, de- 
clared it to be blasphemy. This charge was eagerly laid 
hold of by the orthodox opponents of Bahrdt in Giessen, 
at the head of which was Benner, the senior of the Theo- 
logical Faculty. Already a storm was gathering against 
him, when Herr von Salis-Marschlinz of the canton of 
the Grison, asked whether he would not undertake the 
direction of the newly established Philanthropinum in 
Marschlinz. Bahrdt declared his readiness. Freed from 
the ecclesiastical barriers with which the universities 
were still surrounded, he now entered upon the new soil 
of Illuminism. Basedow, the originator and master of 
these institutions, gave him the preliminary consecration 
for this new vocation. With the spirit of Utilitarianism 
which prevailed in these Philanthropina, it was only too 
much in harmony that the leaders of them did not lose 
sight of their own advantage. Basedow has already been 

1 " Die neusten Offeribarungen Gottesin Brief en und Erzahlun- 
gen " (The Newest Revelations of God in Letters and Tales) 1772. 



138 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINISM. 

brought before us in this point of view ; Herr von- Salts 
was a refined money speculator ; and Balirdt never lost 
sight of his own advantage. In the advertisements and 
prospectuses, humanism, etc., was much spoken of, but 
in deed and in truth, little found. The philanthropinum 
of Marschlinz was a comedy, or rather a tragedy, at 
which actors and public were equally ill off; and the un- 
dertaker and director only wished to earn. For, to see 
that such humbug could not maintain its existence, the 
wise man was not wise enough. Balirdt saved himself in 
sufficient time before its fall ; he received a call as Super- 
intendent to Diirkheim, on the Hardt. That was one of 
the numerous miniature principalities into which the holy 
Roman empire had been dissolved previous to its fall ; at 
its head were a well-meaning but weak prince (Leiningen- 
Dachsburg), mistresses, an intriguer in the back ground, 
etc., in short, everything just as a novel of the last cen- 
tury demanded. Bahrdt had now, from the educational 
sphere, to fall back upon theology ; and for that he did 
not lack either energy or versatility. But the question 
was, what was he to preach? To bring his neological 
thoughts, as they were lying in his mind, before the people, 
was a step for which he did not think them sufficiently pre- 
pared — and, what in his case will say more, neither did 
he think his own position to be sufficiently secure. It 
appeared to him to be most advisable to give utterance 
to principles, which, of themselves, must lead to the 
overthrow of the faith of the Church, but to abstain from 
direct attacks. He preached moral sermons, and found 
an abundant supply of thoughts in the motives of our 
actions. Then, on the part of the prince, the thought 
was suggested to him to establish a Philanthropinum in 
the princely Castle of Heidesheim. Rash and inconsi- 
derate as he was, he entertained the thought with all 



BAHRDT. 139 

ardour. In vain was the experience which he had ac- 
quired at Marschlinz. The practical talents which lay 
dormant in him (he had, at school, been an adept at hair- 
dressing ; in Erfurt a renowned cook) urged him on ; 
money and renown allured him. An inexhaustible 
schemer, and clever in single things, Bahrdt was yet, upon 
the whole, a most unpractical man. " You have," writes 
one of his favourites, " all the dispositions for a scholar, 
but none for a worldly wise man. God grant that you 
may not again fall upon some new scheme ; all which you 
have L hitherto planned have failed." (Briefe, iii. S. 6). 
After the advertisement was issued, not a few teachers 
came forward, to the great joy of Bahrdt ; and just as 
they offered themselves, our practical man took them, 
and afterwards wondered that almost none of them were 
efficient. We shall believe, that, with the greatest ex- 
penditure of strength, he took into his hands the whole, 
as well as the minutest details; but that which these 
Philanthropina intended to impart to mankind, viz., 
morals and order, was not to be imparted to this Philan- 
thropinum ; and, owing to his many occupations, it 
never occurred to Bahrdt to ask himself whether they 
were in him. In order to put an end to his pecuniary 
embarrassments, Bahrdt adopted the strange idea of un- 
dertaking a journey to England and Holland in order to 
obtain pupils. With not fully three florins in his pocket, 
he set out, trusting, as he said, in Providence. He, of 
course, came into great difficulties ; was upon one occa- 
sion distressed by hunger, but gained his object. When 
he joyfully hastened home, he learned that the Imperial 
Aulic Council had issued a sentence which deposed 
him from his offices, and imposed upon him the obligation 
of either retracting his errors, or of submitting to banish- 
ment from the German Empire. (Briefe, ii. S. 37, ff.) 



140 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINISM. 

By the advice of a false friend, he abandoned his Philan- 
thropinum and office of Superintendent, and fled, with 
the greatest haste, to Prussia, the land of Illuminism 
(1779). Considering the state in which Bahrdt's aflairswere 
at Heidesheim, he must have regarded it as a very for- 
tunate event that the Emperor expelled him. To the 
runaway, his most faithful friend Heres, wrote : " Seek to 
get rid of a habit which with you has certainly become 
a vice ; because, irrespective of Christianity, you have, as 
a husband, bound yourself to another line of conduct 
(these words allow us to think only of adultery). And 
this very thing would have ruined you, even if the Em- 
peror had let you alone." (Brief e III., S. 7.) In agree- 
ment with Teller, Bahrdt resolved upon going to Halle. 
The intelligence that Bahrdt had arrived, was a great 
event for Halle. But, contrary to all expectation, Bahrdt 
was very coolly received by the learned men of that place. 
The popular philosopher, Eberhard, handed to him from 
time to time relief, which proceeded from the Berlin 
Illuminists, but behaved like a patron of high rank. 
None of the members of the theological faculty returned 
his visits. Bahrdt had come to Halle in the expectation 
of finding there a sphere of labour as a teacher of theo- 
logy, or, at all events of philosophy, and the minister, 
Zedlitz was by no means unfavourable to his views. 1 

a Most characteristic of Zedlitz and Bahrdt is the letter of the 
former (Briefe, ii. S. 67), "Believe me," he writes among other 
things, " that I recognise and value liberty of conscience, but 
have at the same time too high an esteem for it, even to allow 
restlessness and mere combativeness to escape under its 
name. Your own good understanding now surely tells you 
much more than any request can, that at present you must be 
most cautious in your walk, in order that people may not be 
induced to believe that your free mode of thinking has origi- 
nated more from the desires of your heart, than from the convic- 
tion of your understanding." 



BAHRDT. 141 

But the theological faculty, with Sender at its head, 
entered a most violent protest. " Our vocation/' the 
faculty declared, " demands not only that we should pre- 
vent the dissemination of directly irreligious opinions, 
but also that we should watch over the doctrines which 
are contained in Holy Scripture, and, in conformity with 
it, in the Augsburg Confession of Faith." 1 Thus spoke a 
faculty at the head of which Sender stood. Here, that 
which we have designated above as the one great agent 
of the life of Bahrdt, reaches its highest point, — that 
point in which the tragical feature of this life lies. Every 
where, in Erfurt, in Giessen, in Durkheim, in Halle, Bahrdt 
had to yield to the power of the traditional. In Knuzen's 
age, that would have been a well-merited fate ; but at 
present, even the representatives of the traditional had 
too much of Bahrdt in them to have been entitled to 
interfere against Bahrdt. In Erfurt and Giessen, the 
faith of the Church had been more or less the pretext for 
personal opposition. Under the Emperor of Illuminism, 
that sentence of the Imperial Aulic Council could not make 
any impression upon Bahrdt. And now, to crown the 
whole, Semler's opposition: 

Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes ? 
Bahrdt was fully entitled to write against Semler, 
whose productions had contributed to destroy in him the 
last remnant of the faith of the Church : " A man like 
Semler, the first of the authors of Illuminism in Ger- 
many, should have been the last man to have told, in the 
face of enlightened Zedlitz, the absurdity that he was 
called to watch over the doctrines of the Augsburg Con- 
fession" (Leben, IV. S. 61). Bahrdt, however, delivered 
lectures on philosophy, philology, ethics, and rhetoric, a 

1 Semler's Leben, I. S. 12. 



142 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMIXISAT. 

part of which obtained great applause. He was not 
slack in his solicitations for offices. Minister Zedlitz 
writes to him : " The manner in which you torment me, 
passes all conception. I believe I must rid myself of you 
by sincerely telling you my mind. For, from the equery 
up to the professor ordinarius matheseos, or professor of 
anatomy, scarcely a place can be vacant without your 
asking it." 1 Even for the sake of his daily bread he was 
obliged to write. His clear, fluent, insinuating style, 
fitted him for a popular writer on the side of Illumbusm. 
For all that he had hitherto cleared away in the doctrine 
of the Church, he had adduced arguments from Scripture, 
in the belief that the contents of Scripture were divine 
truth. As yet he considered Christ to be a divine pro- 
phet. Then Eberhard, the apologist of Socrates, raised 
in him the idea that Christ might have learned and com- 
posed li His excellent system and doctrines from the 
writings of the wise men of Greece." And. when once 
the educationist Trapp 9 loudly laughing, asked him : 
" Aye, aye, the reasonable Bahrdtus still believes in re- 
velation?" "I felt." says Bahrdt, "ashamed; the death- 
hour of my faith had struck" (Leben, iv. S. 114). It- 
was Senders critical writings that brought him to the 
knowledge that Scripture was a purely human book. 
"I now," he says (Leben, iv. S. 119) 4i considered reve- 
lation as a common and natural event of Providence. I 
regarded Moses and Jesus just as I did Confucius. Luther. 
Sender, and myself, as instruments of Providence. I 
was convinced that these and similar men had drawn 
from the source of reason only." It was in this sense 
that he treated the evangelical history in his * Brief e 

1 Briefe) iii. S. -54. On the other hand Bahrdt (Geschichte 
meiner Gefangenschaft, S. 21). gives to himself the testimony : 

u Soliciting- was never my business." 



BAHRDT. 143 

iiber die Bibel im Volkstone" (1782) and " Ausfiihrung 
des Plans unci Zweckes Jesu in Brief en" (1784). The 
evangelical history is in his hands changed into a senti- 
mental novel, in which, at first, the freshness of style, and 
the bold strokes at history engage the attention, but 
which, at last, since the same motives ever return, disap- 
pears in sand. Bahrdt has thus become a complete dis- 
ciple of Naturalism ; and, so he called himself. " The 
basis of all religion," so he declared in his much read book, 
System dermoralischen Religion (178 7) is morals. " Strange ! 
that a man should offer himself to humanity as a teacher 
of morality who, in his walk, more and more denied its 
principles. That defect which, to speak with Semler, 
was notorious in him, was levity. He had been so often 
told that, that he was not only obliged to confess it to 
himself, but could not even well omit mentioning it in his 
characteristics of himself. 

" As levity is with me a disease of which I am, and have 
been for many years conscious, I am certainly best enabled 
to describe the disease as to its phenomena and causes, 
such, at least, as it is in me. My levity is an idiosyncrasy, 
a quickness of my spirit, which has its foundation in my 
individual constitution, and in consequence of which I 
take up the first light in which any object appears to my 
mind, and continue to consider it in the same light." 
Even this confession bears witness to his levity. It is 
closely connected with Bahrdt's natural disposition, that 
he is anxious to trace back the phenomena of intellectual 
and spiritual life to physical causes. Just as he derived 
the pietistic tendency of his friend Pallmann from his 
(Pallmann's) thick blood (Leben, I. S. 313) ; so, as re- 
gards himself, he finds the cause of his levity in an un- 
healthy state of his constitution. We need not, therefore, 
wonder that he was tormented with fatalism. Bahrdt 



144 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLTJM1NISM. 

got older ; but his levity increased. His mental energy 
decreased ; bodily suffering came on in addition ; and yet 
the whole strength of a man was required for maintaining 
his outward position. Thus, he who frequently visited 
the drinking houses in and around Halle, was struck with 
the idea of establishing an inn in a vineyard near Halle. 
This rash project only contributed, of course, to the 
increase of his levity. His relation to a servant girl who 
attended to the inn, gave general offence, just as his un- 
happy wife was the object of general sympathy. The 
deeper he sank, the bolder were the schemes which he 
hatched ; and wealth and honour were the objects of all 
of them, It was at the time of Wollner's religious edict, 
(see p. 60). Calculating upon the movement called forth 
by this reactionary attempt in the circles of Illuminism, 
Bahrdt, an old free-mason (and, as it appears, in connec- 
tion with the Leipzig bookseller Degenhard Pott) formed 
the scheme of the so-called German Union (see p. 61), 
whose aim it was "to carry out the great object of the 
sublime founder of Christianity, viz. the enlightenment 
of mankind, and the dethroning of superstition and 
fanaticism." If we review the plan of this "Union," the 
documents of which are fully before us, there cannot be 
any doubt that the whole was a net of speculations and 
mystifications by Bahrdt ; and in this net a great many 
notable Germans were caught by their blind desire for 
light. Two pamphlets, expressing the opinions of this 
propaganda of opposition, appeared: "A Commentary 
upon the Religious Edict," and " The Religious Edict, a 
Comedy in five Acts" (1787). The rumours which were 
spreading about the dangerous tendencies of the German 
Union, and the strong suspicion that Bahrdt was the 
author of these pamphlets, caused a judicial inquiry to be 
made. The proceedings of the Prussian authorities, 



BAHRDT. 145 

especially the sentence of the Kammergericht 1 with its 
sharp, thorough, and, withal, liberal argumentation, make 
a most beneficial impression, especially when compared 
with the sentence of the Imperial Aulic Council, formerly 
mentioned. The sentence of the Kammergericht, which 
inflicted upon him a two years' imprisonment in a fortress, 
was mitigated by the king to a twelvemonth's imprison- 
ment. There Bahrdt suffered any thing but want ; the 
state of his health improved. But even here, Bahrdt did 
not find time for repentance. He returned to Halle al- 
together unchanged ; but his hour was soon to come. He 
died of a bad disease, which marked his body with its 
disgusting signs (1792). 

In thus more minutely reviewing the life of this man, 
we do not think that we have lost sight of our intention of 
picturing that period in outline. In order to understand 
an age, it is necessary to consider it from one point ; and 
Bahrdt's life which lies before us, so exposed as to all its 
innermost motives, is, better than any other, fitted for that 
purpose. While in Bahrdt, Illuminism in its French form 
appeared on the territory of Theology, a blow, in the direc- 
tion of the strongest English Theism, was struck in the 
eighth decade of that century. From 1774 to 1778, 
Lessing published seven fragments from a larger work, 
which defended the right of Theism, attacked the Church's 
doctrine of inspiration, and subjected the biblical history 
to a bold criticism. It is proven that the author of this 
work is the Hamburg Professor Samuel Hermann 
Reimarus, (died 1768), and the manuscript of it, under the 
title : t; Vindication of the rational worshippers of God," 2 

1 The higher judicial court of Prussia. 

2 Schutzschrift fur die verniinftigen Verehrer Gottes." It is 
from this manuscript that Br Klose got the work reprinted in 
Niedner's Journal for 1850. 



146 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLOnXISM. 

is kept in the Hamburg Town library. The tendency of 
this work is to resolve Scripture and the doctrine of the 
Church into theistic rationalism. The manner in which 
he arrived at such conclusions. Reimarus himself states 
in the introduction to the work. By his parents he had 
been faithfully instructed in Christianity, yea, had been 
destined to be a theologian. But then the thought had 
impressed itself upon his mind, that Scripture after all 
spoke so very indistinctly and loosely of what, in the 
symbolical books of the Church, and in the systems of 
divinity, was so minutely defined and fixed. If these 
symbolical books and systems were of such consequence. 
why had God not expressed Himself more distinctly in 
Scripture ? And many things in these symbols and sys- 
tems — especially the Trinity — had become more and more 
unintelligible to him. But he could not stop with the 
omission of the Trinity from his views. Very soon he 
became unable to persuade himself that God could 
abandon to destruction ninety-nine parts of mankind who, 
without any fault of theirs, did not know any thing of 
Jesus Christ. After having thus estranged himself from 
the doctrine of the Church, he had been disgusted with a 
large portion of the history of the Old and Xew Testa- 
ments. It had been impossible for him to devote himself 
to Theology with such doubts : and. involved in other 
studies, he had therefore let these questions alone. But 
he could not remain for any length of time in this un- 
decided state. He had been thinking, writing, etc., until 
the materials had become a whole, which he onered in 
this book. But he would not publish his work ; for that, 
the time was not yet prepared ; but it would come. 
Lessing's opinion of these fragments is, in the main, cor- 
rect : *' ; They are written with the utmost frankness, but, 
at the same time, with the utmost earnestness. The 



WOUPENBUTTEL FRAGMENTS. 147 

author never forgets Iris dignity: levity does not seem to 
have been a fault of his ; and nowhere does he allow him- 
self to rail or joke. He is a true, deliberate German in 
his style, as well as in his views. He tells his opinion in 
a straight-forward manner., and despises all those little 
resources for taking by surprise the applause of his read- 
ers." Acute understanding, moral earnestness, a thorough- 
going treatment cannot be denied to the author of these 
fragments, and characterize the German. The thought 
which forms the foundation of the whole investigation, 
and which he advances in ever new variety, is this : that 
the Christian's conviction of the truth of his religion is of 
no greater value than the convictions of the Mahometan 
and Jew, unless it be the result of an unprejudiced ex- 
amination by reason. The ways in which Christianity 
in its present form acquires a conviction of its truth are 
altogether objectionable : " That is not the right way ; 
first, to baptize the children while yet in the cradle, par 
force to be Christians, and in doing so to suppose in them 
Christian faith, and a desire after baptism ; then, before 
reason can be exercised, to educate them, without any 
reasonable religion, into a blind belief in the Bible and 
its doctrines, and deeply to impress such belief upon their 
tender minds by means of fear and hope, heaven and hell : 
but, finally, when the years of discretion, and for the 
examination of faith have come, carefully to warn them 
against the use of their blind and corrupt reason, and to 
demand of them that, first of all, they should bring their 
reason under captivity to the obedience of that faith 
which had been instilled into them by childish prejudice 
merely ; — that indeed is choking all reason, and reason- 
able religion in man " (see Niedner's Journal, 1850, S. 575) . 
Every child should first be instructed in the general truths 
of reason; it may afterwards decide for itself. By 



148 THE THEOLOGY OF ELLUWN&M. 

" reason," the Fragmentist understands nothing else than 
the principle of clearness, as it had been worked out by 
the schools of Leibnitz and Wolff. He says : " I think 
that the fundamental principles of reason can be expressed 
in the two propositions : every thing is that which it is : 
a thing cannot, at the same time, be, and not be : — 
hence in the -principle identitatis et contradictionis" (1. c. 
S. 579). It may be that reason comes to a territory 
which goes beyond its reach — to revelations and mysteries 
— but nothing which is to be received into the conviction 
must be against reason (1. c. S. 583). At all events, 
however, reason alone must decide as to what religion one 
is to adopt. According to its principle, that that which 
contradicts itself cannot be true, reason must give the 
verdict that Christianity does not rest on a revelation ; 
for all the facts of the Old and Xew Testament which 
are brought forward in proof of it. are historically im- 
possible. The Fragmentist especially, and with great 
ingenuity, lays open the contradictions in the accounts of 
Christ's resurrection. Christ declared Himself to be the 
Messiah. In so doing, He intended nothing else but the 
restitution of the Jewish State. Whatever in the gospels 
does not harmonize with this plan, has been inserted into 
His life by the disciples, from their later convictions. 
Christ was far from wishing to abolish the Jewish law ; 
He denounced the external view of it only. With this 
plan of Christ, John the Baptist agreed : and both. 
according to agreement, worked into each other's hands. 
The execution of His plans was by Christ fixed for the 
high festival. Triumphantly He entered Jerusalem, excited 
the masses by bold speeches against their superiors, and 
exercised authority in the temple. But instead of a 
throne, He found the cross, and repented in dying, by 
declaring Himself to be forsaken of God. His disciples 



TVOLFEXBUTTEL FRAGMENTS. 149 

now understood, in a spiritual sense, the doctrine of the 
kingdom, and represented the life and doctrine of their 
Master accordingly. Now, from these results, one would 
indeed imagine that the Fragmentist knows only a 
negative relation of his Rationalism to Christianity ; but 
he, nevertheless, again represents Christ as a hero of 
reason, and speaks with approbation of the apostles and 
the oldest fathers ; he by no means wishes to secede from 
the Church with those who share in his opinions. " Yes, 
yes," so people will say, " from that nothing but pure 
Theism will result — the evil of all evils for Christianity — 
upon which our modern free thinkers are bent with all 
their might, and which just amounts to doing away with 
Christianity altogether. I confess that Theism is a great 
evil for Christianity ; and although I put it last, I by no 
means consider it to be the least. The question, however, 
only is : whether such mischief is not mainly called forth 
and increased by the suppression of the reasonable 
religion. If our theologians were to soften down their 
hard doctrines, and would gradually steer towards common 
sense, the Christian religion could well consist with natural 
religion ; and no one would so easily have any cause for 
denying his faith, and embracing Theism. They then 
could and must yield, because Christ Himself, as their 
Master, when we regard Him as a teacher of all men, has 
taught nothing but intelligible, practical truths, and has 
placed in them the essence of religion ; and because the 
apostles cannot be acquitted of human errors and inten- 
tions, in as much as, after the death of their Master, and 
with a view to His worship and apotheosis, they con- 
structed a system of doctrines which is arranged according 
to Jewish notions of the Messiah. Let us then, in the 
first instance, give up the hard doctrine of the Theop- 
neustia of the apostles in all their discourses, writings^ 



150 THE THEOLOGY OF ELLUMTNTISM. 

and actions ; and let us take out of their system that 
which is good, which applies to all men, and will serve 
for the improvement of their intellect and will : for it is 
quite impossible that all the nations of the human race 
should be brought to a conviction and belief in the 
apostolic semi- Judaic system. Man is not made for a 
religion which is based on facts, and these, such as are 
said to have happened in a corner of the earth, and imply 
a great knowledge of languages, criticism, history, 
antiquities, and logic. If, with the view of making 
Christianity a general religion for all mankind, the 
theologians would, as well as possible, interpret and guide 
the apostolic system, not many Theists would remain ; 
for it cannot be denied, that not only Christ's doctrines, 
but also those of the apostles, contain very much that 
is good. The effect of such mitigated, rational Chris- 
tianity, we have before us in the Anglican Church, where, 
notwithstanding the great liberty in thinking and writing, 
Theism does, nevertheless, not increase and prevail, or 
supersede Christianity and the Episcopal Church, because 
as much scope is granted to reason as it has a right to 
demand'' (1. c. S. 628, ff). The meaning of this rather 
long and characteristic effusion, is shortly this: The 
rationalists will remain Christians, if the Christians will 
become rationalists. 

The Fragments effected what, according to the inten- 
tion of their editor, they were expected to do. They 
put in motion the theology of the age. From the 
general opposition which they called forth, it was to be 
seen that the theology of the age did not wish for a 
rationalism which would radically do away with Scripture 
and the doctrine of the Church ; but it was at the same 
time evident, that the old stand-point of the Church was 
no more in strength. The most important voices which 



LESSING. 151 

were raised against the Fragmentist (Doderlein, Semler, 
Less, Jerusalem), belonged to that mediating theology, 
which made concessions, greater or less, to Iiluminism. 
Such was, as Lessing himself says, the prevailing tendency. 
" The pulpits now resound with nothing but the intimate 
union between reason and faith. Faith has become 
reason confirmed by signs and miracles, and reason has 
become reasoning faith. The whole of revealed religion 
is now nothing else than a renewed sanction of the 
religion of reason. Mysteries either do not exist at all, 
or, if they do, it is quite the same whether the Christian 
connects them with this or that notion, or with none at 
all.''' In this mediating theology, Lessing did not see 
any consistency ; in this Christianity of reason, he saw 
neither reason nor Christianity. He was not in favour of 
orthodoxy : yet it inspired him with greater respect than 
that modern theology. " What/' so he says, i; what else 
is this modern theology when compared with orthodoxy, 
than dung water with clear water ? With orthodoxy we 
had, thanks to God, pretty much settled ; between it and 
philosophy, a barrier had been erected, behind which 
each of these could walk in its own way without molesting 
the other. But what is it that they are now doing ? 
They pull dovrn this barrier, and under the pretext of 
making us rational Christians, they make us most 
irrational philosophers. In this we agree, that our old 
religious system is false, but I should not like to say 
with you (Lessing writes to his brother), that it is a 
patch-work, got up by bunglers and semi- philosophers. 
I do not know of anything in the world in which human 
ingenuity had more shown and exercised itself, than 
in it. A patch-work by bunglers and semi-philoso- 
phers is that religious system which they would put in 
the place of the old one, and, in doing so, would pre- 



152 THE THEOLOGY OP ILLUMINISM. 

tend to far more rational philosophy than the old one 
claims." 

But what was it that Lessing desired? We have already 
become acquainted with him as a man who was anxious 
not so much for established truth, as for striving after 
truth, — as a man who did not like to think loypxrtxas, 
but yvfAvourriKas. When he edited the Fragments, it 
was the agitation called forth by them which was his ob- 
ject. He by no means held the stand-point of the Frag- 
merits. In the notes with which he accompanied them, 
he often declared against their conclusions. But he 
thought himself called upon, in a most impressive man- 
ner, to direct the attention of the theologians of his time, 
to the weakness, inconsistencies, and defects of their evi- 
dences of, and apologies for, Christianity. It was by this 
position that the theologians were offended. Semler 
compared it to the conduct of an Englishman who set on 
fire the house of his neighbour in order to make him 
cautious, and keep the fire-engines of the town in prac- 
tice. But it was especially Goze who could not pardon 
Lessing for having published attacks on Christianity, which 
could not fail to endanger many souls, and who declared 
the position occupied by him to be most perilous. For, 
Lessing maintained from the very outset that, even sup- 
posing the Fragmentist to be right, Christianity was not 
thereby endangered. " The letter," he said, " is not the 
spirit, and the Bible is not religion. Consequently ob- 
jections against the letter as well as against the Bible are 
not precisely objections against the spirit and religion. 
For the Bible evidently contains more than belongs to 
religion ; and it is a mere supposition that in this addi- 
tional matter which it contains, it must be equally infal- 
lible. Moreover, religion existed before there was a Bible. 
Christianity existed before evangelists and apostles had 



LESSIXG. 153 

written. How much soever, therefore, may depend upon 
those Scriptures, it is not possible that the whole truth of 
the Christian religion should depend upon them. Since 
there existed a period in which it was already so far 
spread, in which it had already taken hold of so many 
souls, and in which, nevertheless, not one letter was writ- 
ten of that which has come down to us ; it must be pos- 
sible also that everything which evangelists and apostles 
have written might be lost again, and yet the religion 
taught by them stand. The Christian religion is not true 
because evangelists and apostles taught it ; but they 
taught it because it is true. It is from their internal 
truth that all written documents must be explained, and 
all the written documents cannot give it internal truth 
when it has none" (Lessing's works, edited by Lachnann, 
X. S. 10). These propositions were based upon the con- 
viction that the religion of Christ — which he distin- 
guished from the Christian religion as that religion which 
Christ had taught — was a life immediately implanted and 
maintained in our heart, which manifested itself in love, 
and in its happiness was its own guarantee, and which 
would neither stand nor fall with the facts of the gospel. 
" Although I may not have the slightest objection to the 
facts of the gospel, this is not of the slightest consequence 
for my religious convictions. Although, historically, I 
may have nothing to object to Christ's having even 
risen from the dead, must I for that reason accept it as 
true that this very risen Christ was the Son of God ? " 
(1. c. S. 36.) Truths of religion have nothing to do 
with facts of history. If, then, such be the relation of 
religion to evangelical history, it follows that it is not 
bound to the scriptural testimony of evangelical history. 
—Scripture stands in the same relation to the Church, 
as the plan of a large building to the building itself. 



154 THE THEOLOGY OY ILLUMENISM. 

It would be ridiculous if. at a conflagration, people 
were first of all to save the plan ; but just as ridiculous 
is it to fear any danger to Christianity from an attack 
upon Scripture. That Christianity does not depend 
upon Scripture follows from the circumstance, that 
Christianity existed long before any Scripture could be 
thought of, and that the Church of the first four cen- 
turies did not see in Scripture the fountain of Christian 
faith, but in the rule of faith. Those Scriptures which 
arose occasionally only, and were collected into a canon 
only at a late period, contain very many things which do 
not belong to faith. " What other, even good Lutheran 
divines, have asserted of whole books of the Bible, I 
surely may as well assert of single facts in this or that 
book. At least one must be a Rabbin or a Homiiist in 
order to discover a possibility, or a play upon words, by 
which the Hajemim of Ana. the Crethi and Plethi of 
David, the cloak which Paul left behind in Troas, and 
a hundred other things of that kind, can be brought 
into any relation to religion/''" (See 1. c. S. 137.) The 
orthodox doctrine of inspiration is untenable, even if this 
be granted, but still more irreconcileable is it with the un- 
deniable fact, that Scripture contradicts itself in essential 
points. In his "Duplik" Lessing proved, in reference to 
the history of the resurrection, that it contains irrecon- 
cileable contradictions ; but it does not follow from this 
circumstance that the resurrection is imhistorical. " Who 
has ever ventured to draw the same inference in profane 
history ? If Livy, Polybius, Dionysius, and Tacitus 
relate the very same event, it may be the very same battle, 
the very same siege, each one differing so much in the 
details, that those of the one completely give the lie to 
those of the other, has any one, for that reason, ever denied 
the event itself in which they agree ?* (See I. c. S. 51.) 



LESSING. 155 

As he proved in an essay among his posthumous works 
(see Lachmanris edition of Lessing's works. XL S. 495). 
Lessing considered the synoptical gospels to be revisions 
of an Hebrew original gospel. 

Such are the thoughts which Lessing in his theological 
polemical writings, especially against Gaze, has either 
advanced, or (as we learn from his posthumous works) 
was to advance against others, such as Walch, Senxler, 
Silberschlag. That the Fragments would meet with 
opposition, Lessing not only foresaw, but intended even 
for his own satisfaction. More unexpected by him seems 
to have been the opposition which his own views raised. 
Certain it is that Lessing advanced views with which the 
theology of that period had not yet grappled. But the 
distinction which he made between the internal religion, and 
the facts of salvation, his lowering the faith in Jesus into 
the faith of Jesus, was the extinction of Christianity, and 
with the authority of which he divested the word of Scrip- 
ture, the foundation of Protestantism fell. To grant Less- 
ing's propositions, was virtually to give up Christianity and 
Protestantism ; and that he could not expect of the 
theologians of his time. Very few indeed of those who 
admire Lessing's polemics, have had the external and 
internal means of being able impartially to estimate 
Goze's stand-point. He was a learned and ingenious man, 
earnestly standing in the faith of the Church, who, it is 
true, had a zeal, but not according to knowledge, and 
who had not the ability of putting himself into, and sym- 
pathizing with, the views of his adversary. One must 
consider that the language of him who has much to lose 
is different from that of him who is proceeding to make 
conquests by his dialectics. Lessing had in his favour 
the superiority of his genius, the versatility of his style, 
the charm which destruction holds out, the spirit of the 



156 THE THEOLOGY OF HXUMENISM. 

time. yea. even a certain appearance of martyrdom with 
which he surrounded himself. Rich means for striving 
after truth were given to him : but Christianity is not 
a striving after truth, but possession of the truth, and 
that firm position Lessing refused to occupy. He 
was not in earnest with tradition, to which he ap- 
pealed : nor with the idea of inspiration, to which he 
allowed a place in his education of mankind. We shall 
not find too much fault with him that he had a low 
opinion of theology : but this bad opinion was connected 
with a low opinion of every thing positive. When he 
was about to represent naturalism from his old pulpit (as 
he calls the stage) in his K Nathan," he wrote to his 
brother: l( I should not like indeed that the real subject of 
my play to be published, were to be known too early : 
but yet if you wish to know it. see the Decameron of 
Boccacio (I. 3. Melchizedick Giudeo). I think I have 
invented a very interesting episode for it. so that all shall 
read very well, and I shall certainly thereby serve a worse 
trick to the theologians than I could do by ten Frag- 
ments." (Lachm. ed. XII. S. 510,) K Nathan "* was the 
triumph of the men of IUuminism. especially of Moses 
Mendelssohn who had very special reasons for thinking that 
he was represented in the wise Jew. Mendelssohn looked 
up to Lessing as the genius of llluminism. and the manner 
in which Mendelssohn treated the place in his house where 
Lessing's bust was standing,, may almost be called a wor- 
ship. Then the old Popular Philosopher learned from the 
daughter of the Fragmentist. En.se Beimarus 3 that Less- 
ing, at the close of his life, had been an adherent of 
Spinoza. This intelligence was from Jacobi. That was 
surprising to Mendelssohn. " If Lessing was able abso- 
lutely, and without all further limitation,, to declare for 
the system of any man. he was at that time no more with 



LESSING, 157 

himself, or he was in a strange humour to make a para- 
doxical assertion which, in a serious hour, he himself 
again rejected. But if Lessing, perhaps, said, f Dear 
brother, Spinoza who has been decried so much, may in 
many points have seen farther than all those criers who 
have become heroes by him; in his Ethics especially, 
excellent things are contained — better things perhaps 
than in many an orthodox sjstem of morals ; his system 
is not so absurd as people believe/ — well, then, Men- 
delssohn will be satisfied." (Jacobi's works, IY. 1, S. 
44.) But according to Jacobi's testimony, Lessing 
had not spoken thus. Jacobi had visited Lessing in 
Wolfenbiittel in the summer of 1780. Engaged in 
writing letters, Jacobi handed to him, when he entered, 
his portfolio to amuse himself in the meanwhile ; and 
when Lessing desired to read still more, he gave him a 
paper containing Gathers Prometheus. (i You have," 
said Jacobi, * given so much offence; so you may now 
take one for once/' "I have," answered Lessing, after 
having read the poem, " not taken any offence. I had 
that long ago from the first hand." 'You know the 
poem ?' w The poem I never read, but I find it good." 
8 In its way, I too, else I should not have shewn it to you.' 
" That's not what I am speaking of ; I mean the point 
of view from which the poem is conceived, that is my 

own point of view The orthodox notions 

about the Deity are no more for me ; I cannot relish 
them. '' v-j Ket \ 77^. I don't know anything else. 
That is also the drift of the poem, and, I must confess, I 
like it much." ' Then you would be pretty much at one 
with Spinoza." 'If I am to name myself after any one, 
I don't know any other." 6 Spinoza is good enough for 
me, but yet it is a poor salvation which we find in his 
name.' •'•' Yes, you are right . . , and yet . . . 



158 THE THEOLOGY OF HXUMENISM. 

Do yon know any thing* better ?"' The conversation was 
continued next day : " I have come.'*' began Lessing, •'•' to 
speak to you about my "En *«i v&p\ you got alarmed 
yesterday." * You surprised me. and I felt nay confusion ; 
yet it was not terror. It was indeed contrary to my ex- 
pectation to find in you a Spiiiozist or Pantheist, and 
still more was I surprised that yon declared it to me 
in a manner so sudden and on-hand. I had come 
chiefly with the intention of obtaining aid from you 
against Spinoza/' "You thus know him then?'"'' •' I 
believe I know him as only few can have done.'* •'•' Then 
there is no help for you : rather become his friend alto- 
gether. There is no other philosophy than that of 
Spinoza.''' • That may be true : for the determinist. to 
be consistent, must become a fatalist : all the rest then 
follows of itself.' £, 'I perceive that we understand one 
another ; but I am the more anxious to hear from you 
what you consider to be the spirit of Spinozism — I mean 
that spirit which had taken possession of Spinoza him- 
self.'' Jacobi now enters more particularly into the 
centre of the system. i; As regards our credo" so Less- 
ing winds up. u we shall thus not quarrel." *'That we 
shall not do at any rate : but my credo does not stand in 
Spinoza. I believe in a rational 

•Id! •'•' So much the better." replied Lessing, •'•' I 
shall thus hear something altogether new/' ; Don't re- 
joice too much in the prospect. I get myself by a 

tale out of this difficulty, and yon d:d not use ;: find 
much pleasure in this ■' head over heels.'' Jacobi then 
set forth how personal life was not consistent with Spi- 
noza's system. •'•' I understand." replied Lessing, -you 
would like to have your will free." "I don't desire any 
free will, and in general I am not in the least frightened 
bv what vou were just saying. 3 Jacobi now showed that 



LESSIXG. 159 

Spinoza's substance had no personal life, without the 
things, no personality. Lessing : * Very well ; but accord- 
ing to what notions do youthen conceive of your personal 
extra-mundane deity ? According to the notions of Leib- 
nitz, perhaps? I fear that he himself was. at heart at 
least, a Spinezist." ( Do you speak in earnest ?' "Are 
you in earnest in doubting of it :" Lessing referred to a 
passage in Leibnitz, but soon confessed that he had said 
somewhat too much ; while, on the other hand, Jacobi 
granted to him that there existed a great affinity between 
Spinoza and Leibnitz. •'•' I do not give you any rest ; 
you must come out with this parallelism. . . . Surely 
people always speak of Spinoza as of a dead dog." 4 They 
will continue to speak of him in this way. To under- 
stand Spinoza requires a too lengthened and persevering 
effort of the mind. Such a calmness, such a heaven in 
the understanding, few men may have tasted.' " And 
you are not a Spinozist, Jacobi ?*' f No, upon my 
honour.' ;; L^pon my honour then, with your philosophy 
you must turn your back upon all philosophy." 'Why 
turn my back upon all philosophy ?' i; Well, then, you 
are a complete sceptic." •' On the contrary, I withdraw 
from a philosophy which renders complete scepticism ne- 
cessary/' ; - And whither withdraw, then ?" ; To the 
light, of which Spinoza says, that it enlightens itself, and 
also the darkness/ * One must,' continues Jacobi, 
6 learn from Spinoza, that certain things cannot be 
demonstrated. In order to prove his propositions, he 
has lost himself in sophisms. And it was this which I 
maintained, that even the greatest head must come to 
nonsense, if he pretends absolutely to demonstrate every- 
thing, to arrange everything according to clear notions, 
and refuse to acknowledge anything else.' i; And what 
him who does not pretend to demonstrate :" f Of 



160 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLOIIXISM. 

hiiu who does not pretend to demonstrate what is incom- 
prehensible, but only wishes to know the boundary line 
where it begins, and only to know that it exists— of him, 
I believe that he gains the greatest scope for true human 
wisdom.' " Xothing but words, dear Jacobi, nothing but 
words. The boundary line which you wish to fix, cannot 
be fixed : and, on the other hand, you give free open 
scope to fancies, nonsense, and blindness.'' 4 1 believe that 
that boundary line could be determined. I myself would 
fix none, but only find and acknowledge that which 
is already fixed. And as regards fancies, nonsense, 
blindness, . .' " They are to be found everywhere, 
where confused notions prevail." ' But still more where 
fictitious notions prevail. Even the blindest, most non- 
sensical belief, although not the most stupid, has there 
its high throne. For he who has once become enamoured 
of certain demonstrations, blindly receives every inference 
which is drawn from them according to every syllogism 
which he cannot invalidate, were it even that he was 
walking on his head. . . According to my opinion, it 
is the greatest merit of the inquirer to disclose, as well as 
to manifest, existence. , . Demonstration is to him a 
means, a way to the goal, but never the ultimate object. 
His ultimate object is that which cannot be demonstrated, 
the indissoluble, absolute, simple. . . . Unbounded 
desire of demonstrating everything makes us so ardently 
seek that which we have in common, that we thereby 
overlook that in which we differ : we always seek to con- 
nect only, that which, with far greater advantage, we 
should keep distinct. . . . ^Moreover, when we put 
together and connect that which can be demonstrated in 
the things, there arises a certain light in the soul which 
darkens more than it enlightens. We then sacrifice 
what Spinoza profoundly and sublimely calls the know- 



LESSING. 161 

ledge of the highest kind, to the knowledge of the lower 
kind ; we close the eye of the soul, wherewith it recognises 
God and itself, in order to contemplate, more undisturbedly, 
with the eyes of the body only/ " Good, very good ; I 
also can use all that, but I cannot apply it in the same 
manner. In general, I do not at all dislike your Salto 
mortale, and I understand how a man of intellect can in 
this way make head and heels in order to get on. If 
possible, take me also with you." ' If you would only 
step on the elastic place which swings me forward, then 
you would get on involuntarily/ " Even for that a swing 
is required, which I can no more expect from my old 
legs and heavy head." 

This conversation (see Jacobi's Works, IV. 1. S. 51, ff.) 
Jacobi was induced to communicate to Mendelssohn, at a 
time when the latter was thinking of a work for the 
glorification of Lessing, the editor of the Fragments, the 
author of Nathan, the great and admired defender of 
Theism and Rationalism. He at once desisted from the 
project in order to prepare a work on Pantheism. Jacobi 
made to him communications on Spinoza s doctrine, of the 
most important kind. In return, Mendelssohn, who had 
soon convinced himself that he had to deal with an 
uu common thinker, with a man uncommonly well ac- 
quainted with Spinoza, and revered by Lessing, promised 
to communicate to him the manuscript of his work. But 
he did not keep this promise ; he could not refrain from 
ill humour towards Jacobi. Unable to impugn the trust- 
worthiness of Jacobi, yea, at one time ready to acknowledge 
in that conversation a remarkable example of intellectual 
aberration for the correction of others, he returned in his 
Morgenstunden to the old idea of Spinoza, to the old 
notion of Lessing, and to his old conviction of the irrecon- 
cileableness of the two. " What ! " he writes, " Lessing a 

L 



162 THE THEOLOGY OF ELLUM3KISM. 

defender of Pantheism ! To whom could the truths of 
the religion of reason be more inviolable than to him, the 
protector of the Fragmentist, the author of Nathan? 
Germany does not know any philosopher who set forth 
the religion of reason with such purity, who taught it so 
entirely free from any admixture of error and prejudice, 
and who so convincingly brought it before sound common 
sense, as the Fragmentist. In undertaking the defence 
of the Fragmentist, Lessing seems also to have received 
his opinions. After his acquaintance with the Frag- 
mentist, we remark, in all his writings, the same calm 
conviction which was so peculiar to the Fragmentist, the 
same plain proceeding of sound, common, intellectual 
sense. Look to his Nathan ! Especially as regards the 
doctrine of the providence and government of God, I do 
not know any author who has impressed these great 
truths on the heart of the reader with the same purity, 
with the same power of convincing, with the same 
interest" (Morgenstunden, Berlin, 1786, S. 258). Men- 
delssohn refuted Spinozism in the sense in which he 
understood it. He showed, however, that a purified 
Spinozism could be unhesitatingly admitted. As it 
appears from a fragment among his posthumous papers, 
" The Christianity of Reason," Lessing had been favour- 
ably disposed towards such a purified Pantheism. 1 After 
these declarations of Mendelssohn, Jacobi thought him- 
self entitled to publish his transactions with Mendelssohn . 
As Mendelssohn had not referred to anything personal, 
this step was not required, and cannot be accounted for 
from merely objective interest, but we must ascribe it also 
to the irritable nature of Jacobi, from his delight in such 
personal quarrels. How much soever the children of the 

1 Lessing's Werke (ed. Laehmann), XI. S. 604. Comp, Schwarz, 
Lessing als Theologe (Halle, 1854), S. 68, ff. 



LESSIXG. 163 

Fragnientist felt offended at the indiscretion of this step ; 
yet it was quite according to the taste of that period, which 
took pleasure in such sad displays. Mendelssohn's part 
in it was, it is true, very tragical. The circumstance 
that Lessing, the great defender of natural religion, 
should have stepped beyond the bounds of common intel- 
lectual sense, and turned to Spinoza, deeply affected him. 
Under great distress he wrote a pamphlet, " To the 
Friends of Lessing" (1786), in which he endeavours to 
render it probable that Lessing permitted himself to joke 
with Jacobi, of whom he knew that he scented Spinozism 
everywhere, in order to cure it with his faith. " Our 
friend who may have very soon found out the honest 
intention of M. Jacobi, was roguish enough to strengthen 
him in the opinion which he had conceived of him. He 
therefore played the part of the attentive pupil, never con- 
tradicted, consented to everything, and only endeavoured, 
by some witty remark, to set the conversation a-going 
again, when it was likely to flag. Hence the forced 
whims, and coarse expressions, the pleasure in bad verses 
(Gothe's Prometheus !) which, to a man like Lessing, was 
so unnatural." It could not be very difficult for Jacobi 
to prove the futility of this evasion. He did so, 1 after 
Mendelssohn was no more. His vital power had been 
long before broken, and that pamphlet against Jacobi had 
been written with his heart's blood. When going to 
deliver the manuscript to the publisher, he caught a cold 
which accelerated his death. And we may well say, that 
that conversation hastened the death of the Popular 
Philosophy also. Since Mendelssohn could not doubt that 
Jacobi could and would say the truth — a matter which 
even the most recent apologist of Lessing could not 

1 Wider Mendelssohn's Beschuldigung en (against Mendelssohn's 
charges), 1786. 



164 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLOIIXISM. 

deny: 1 since Mendelssohn's expedient is untenable; — 
and since the sophistical argument of a purified Spinozism 
is irreconcileable with this conversation, it only remains 
for us to suppose that Lessing, with that profession of 
Spinozism, was at that time in earnest, at that time, and 
so far as a head so dialectic as that of Lessing, could be 
in earnest at all. At all events, the fact that Lessing, 
the genius of Illuminism, entered upon a speculative 
faith, which common intellectual sense could not follow 
at all, was a blow to the Popular Philosophy. That 
which Jacobi says again ■ t Mendelssohn is perfectly correct : 
" The cry of those men in praise and protection of reason 
may, to a great extent, be quite innocent; they indeed 
believe that their opinion is reason, and reason their 
opinion. What is true in this fearful error is this, that a 
truth which floats before their minds subjectively only, is 
by them imagined to be one objectively known, and is even 
confounded by them with reason. By means of such a 
hypostatized truth, one's own adopted system is raised 
beyond all that is right ; and self-conceit utters oracles 
which venture to find fault with everything, without 
allowing any one to find fault with them, and put the 
intellect into fetters, and mislead or seduce the con- 
science." {Wider Mendelssohn's Beschuldigungen, 1786. 
Werke, IV. 2, S. 169, if.) Lessing's conversation called 
forth a whole literature, 2 and there were, indeed, eagles 
among them, that were gathering together around this 
carcase. And yet, it was the simple Wandsbecker Bote 
(Claudius), which spoke the most striking word : " If 
anything was here at ail to be gained or lost, the question 

1 Schwarz, 1. c. S. 87, ff. The expedient which is here brought 
forward amounts substantially to that which Mendelssohn already 
gave in the " Morgenstunden," viz., the purified Spinozism. 

2 It is very carefully characterized by Mirbt, in Kant and 
seine Xachfolger, S. 287, ff. 



LESSING. 165 

would still be, Whether Lessing gains or loses by this 
publication. I judge by the impression which I have of 
it, and ... I do not at all miss in it Lessing, and the 
splendid flashes of lightning to which we are accustomed 
in him ; so that in this aspect he has gained. And as 
regards religion, he had nothing to lose with me. For 
in order to speak in the words of Lessing's own parable, 
the question whether all light comes in through the side 
windows, or whether some light may also come in from 
above, — this question divides the adherents of religion 
into two classes, which are substantially different from 
each other. All the rest gives only shades of more or 
less, and the so-called religion of reason which endeavours 
to mend and restore the broken pot with the sherds, may 
indeed differ in decoro, but little in the result, from that 
which does not mend at all, but allows the sherds to lie 
just as they do. I also have known Lessing. I will not 
say that he was my friend, but I was his ; and although I 
cannot adopt his credo, I have yet a high opinion of his 
head. I had not the privilege of becoming acquainted 
with M. Mendelssohn, but, in common with many others, 
I have esteemed him as a clear inquiring man, and for 
him, as a Jew, I have, as people say, a teiidre, for the sake 
of his great fathers, and my own religion. One is buried 
at Brunswick, the other at Berlin :—Molliter ossa cubent!" 
To two of the men who raised their voices in this con- 
troversy, the immediate future belonged, viz., to Jacobi 
and Kant. However different were the two philosophers, 
yet, in their relation to the Popular Philosophy, they were 
at one in declaring that it was futile to suppose, as this 
philosophy did, that by means of clear notions, we are 
able to lay hold of the truth. Both of these men taught 
to distrust the assertions of the theoretical reason ; both 
sought for some firm point beyond it. This firm point 



166 THE THEOLOGY OF FLLUMTNISM. 

Kant found in morality ; Jacobi, in an immediate organ 
for the divine, in faith. Jacobi was not a philosopher in 
the strict sense of the word, and has not formed a system ; 
but he was a man in the full sense, and as a com- 
plete man he philosophized. He was, so to speak, an 
amateur philosopher, but of an impartiality and purity of 
inquiry, of a chasteness and beauty of style, such as only 
a few of those who are philosophers by profession have 
had. Instinctively, as it were, he always correctly found 
out the one-sidedness of the philosophical systems of his 
time, and told it with regardless openness to the masters. 
But he was unable to demolish those systems by his own 
power. In opposition to the manifold forms which, in 
conformity with their speculations, these philosophers 
gave to the religious spirit, he always upheld and repre- 
sented the right of the immediate religious life, the root 
of which lay, to him, in faith. He did not himself ven- 
ture to call himself a Christian in the full sense of the 
word : but we may certainly count him as among those 
to whom the Lord has said : " Thou art not far from the 
kingdom of God." We have already given a sketch of 
Kant's philosophy. If we compare him with his country- 
men and friends, Hamann and Herder, we may well say 
of him that he had a contracted nature. Of the outward 
and inward tempests which had shaken Hamann, the 
Konigsberg philosopher knew only from his friends or 
books : for he had never got out from his native place 
beyond a few miles, and had equably and uniformly spun 
out his scholar's life with the tenacity of a phlegmatic, 
and the pedantry of an old bachelor. The fulness of 
vital spirits which were rushing through the soul of Her- 
der — that wonderful JEolian harp, was not granted to 
him. But it was just in this one-sidedness that his power 
lay : to the master of the philosophy of criticism, a life of 



J AC OBI KAXT. 167 

stillness and concentration was becoming. That which 
this intellect, working in concealment like the subter- 
raneous spirits of the fable, has brought to light, has been 
more lasting than Hamann's oracles, and than the music 
of Herders mind. From his very youth, a strict sense of 
right was peculiar to Kant. Whatever he once perceived 
to be right, he carried through with immoveable firm- 
ness. In a party, he could put before his servant the 
question, whether for thirty years he had once risen 
after five o'clock. It is only from a life thus regu- 
lated, that we can understand the energy with which he 
brought forward the Categorical Imperative : " Act always 
as a rational being." With Herder's nature, and with 
Hamann's agitated life, Kant's practical philosophy 
would surely have turned out differently. Kant has been 
called the Christian Philosopher of modern times. A 
man who knew Kant very intimately, but who also knew 
Jesus Christ, Borowsky, has judged differently. 1 

In the position in which theology was at that time, it 
could not withdraw itself from the overwhelming influence 
of the Kantian philosophy. Although Kant divested 
illuminative theology of its theoretical self-confidence, yet 
he agreed with it in acknowledging the supremacy of 
reason, and the results of the religion of reason. As, to 
him, religion was only secondary to morality, so, in the 
Christian religion, that only was of importance to him 
which could be brought into connection with moral re- 
ligion. What he wished was not a naturalism placing 
itself in opposition to positive Christianity? but a ration- 
alism uniting itself with the faith of the Church. But 
this union, when viewed more closely, had, it is true, the 
character of condescension, of accommodation. It is only 

1 Darstellungd.es Lebens u. Characters Immanuel Kants (1840). 
S. 197. 



168 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLOIIXIS3I. 

by transforming them, through means of an allegorical 
interpretation, into moral ideas, that he declared the 
essential doctrines of Christianity to be tenable. A large 
circle of theologians (among them Stcludlein, Schmidt. 
Ammon), treated the principal doctrines of theology 
according to Kantian principles. 1 To characterize their 
proceedings, can the less fall within the scope of these 
sketches, as that which was specifically Kantian, very 
soon yielded to the general rational. 

The result of this whole movement of theology, which 
outlasted the age of Illuminism, is Rationalism. In 
general, Rationalism is that tendency which, in matters of 
faith, makes reason the measure and rule of truth. In 
this general signification, Rationalism is met with in the 
history of all positive religions, and in the most varied 
forms. All the great philosophers were rationalists. In 
the Christian Church it existed long before the Illuminative 
theology of the eighteenth century (one need only think, in 
the Ancient Church, of the Monarchies, Gnostics, etc. : in 
the middle age, of Scotus ; at the time of the Reformation, 
of Socinus, etc.): and continues even after Illumi 
has disappeared — only under different names, and in a 
different form. Much confusion has arisen, from the 



1 VThatFlugge wrote (Yersuch einer historisch-kntischen Dar- 
stellung des Einflusses der Kantisclien Philosophie auf alle 
Ziceige der wissenschaftlichen u. praktiseken Theologie, {i. e. 
attempt at a hisiorieo-critical representation of the influence 
which the Kantian philosophy has hitherto exercised upon all 
the branches of scientific and practical theology) can scarcely 
be used as a collection of materials. Staudlin, in his history of 
Rationalism and Supernaturalism (S. 138, ff ), treats this point a 
little more thoroughly than others. Hermann, in his Geschichte 
der Protest. Dogmatik (S. 11-5. ff I, gives a collection of the. results 
of the Kantian school in systematic theology. Excellent glances 
into the whole are given by Rosenkranz in his Geschichte der 
Kantisclien Philosophie, S. 250, ff, S. 323, ff. 



RATIONALISM. 169 

wide sense of the word Rationalism. 1 By the prevailing 
usus loquendi, that theological tendency is called Rational- 
ism, to which the religious convictions of the age ofUlumm- 
ism, were the rule of Christian truth. If we are to speak 
less abstractly, we thereby understand that tendency 
which, in the territory of systematic theology, has been 
represented chiefly by Wegsclieider. on that of Exegesis, 
specially by Paulas, on that of practice, chiefly by Bohr. 
It is distinguished from Theism or Naturalism chiefly by 
connecting its own rationalistic belief with the faith and 
doctrine of the Church, and by the opinion that, in so 
doing, they have laid hold of the substance of it. Its rela- 
tion to the doctrine of the Church, may simply be defined 
thus : While the symbolical works of the Church declare 
Scripture to be the Word of God, the rule of all truth 
{formal principle), Rationalism makes reason to be so; 
while the confession of the Church makes justification by 
faith in Jesus Christ the fundamental doctrine {material 
•principle), Rationalism makes virtue to be so. Let us 
consider a little more closely the formal principle from 
which Rationalism draws its name. It is reason which, 
in matters of faith, decides what is true, and what 
false. Xow, he who reviews the most varied results 
which, in the development of mankind, reason has brought 
forward as regards God and divine things : — he who 
considers the diversity of the doctrines of philosophy 
regarding God, since Descartes ; — he who considers that 
Mendelssohn, who held that it was possible by clear 
notions to find the truth, and Kant, who held the very 
opposite, are equally great authorities with this school ; — 

] A fundamental error — though not the only one — in the 
critical history of Rationalism, by Amand Saintes, is the loose- 
ness and vagueness in his definition of the essence of Ra- 
tionalism. 



170 THE THEOLOGY OE ILLOHNIS3I. 

he will, above all, demand an answer to the questions : 
What reason ? Which are the principles, the laws, the 
results of reason in matters of faith ? But, concerning 
all these questions, great silence is observed in the princi- 
pal doctrinal works of Rationalism. And this silence, so 
inconceivable at first sight, is only too conceivable on a 
closer examination. That which Rationalism calls reason 
is nothing else than the principle of Ittuminism : Clear- 
ness is the measure of truth. But that which was clear 
to Rationalism, was just the sum of the convictions which 
the age of Illuminism entertained : and what it was which 
this age held in matters of faith, we have already seen. 
The one thing which is sure, and established, and 
necessary, is virtue. 1 It is on the foundation of this that 
God and immortality are taken for granted — whether in 
consequence of a proof, or as an axiom, amounts to the 
same thing. The sum of truths which, in England, 
France, and Germany, were declared to be the natural 
and original religion, was by Rationalism assumed as 
certain truths, without entering upon the proof how they 
were connected with the substance of reason. One 
understands how it was that Rationalism could be the 
prevailing tendency of the age. He who makes the 
reason of his age the highest rule of truth, is of course 
borne on the height of his age. Now, the rationalists 
brought the principle regarding the use of reason into 
harmony with the views of the Church regarding Scrip- 
ture, by asserting that Rationalism was the substance of 

1 That this proposition is correct, needs no proof in reference 
to the earlier Rationalism : but that, even in its later develop- 
ment, morality was, to Rationalism, the foundation and rule of 
all religion, Rohr has very distinctly expressed in his treatise : 
Doctrinal theology before the judgment-seat of morality {Die 
Dogmatik vor dem RichierstuJile d.er Moral, in Kleine theol. 
Schrifien 1841, spec. S. 7,-ff). 



RATIONALISM — PAULUS. 171 

Scripture. According to the doctrine of the Church, the 
Scripture is the Word of God. inasmuch as the Holy 
Spirit revealed it to the sacred writers ; but Rationalism 
rejected the idea of an immediate divine influence in 
general, and of a supernatural communication of divine 
truth in particular. 1 That which the doctrine of the 
Church calls Holy Spirit is nothing else than religious 
enthusiasm, which is an altogether natural product of our 
spirit. It is only in this sense that an inspiration of the 
sacred writers can be spoken of. The writings of the 
Old and New Testament are purely human productions, 
which are to be viewed and explained like every other 
literature. The manner in which Rationalism, according 
to this view, explained Scripture, will be most clearly seen 
from the picture of Dr Paulus, a man who. with special 
consistency, carried out the rationalistic mode of viewing 
Scripture. 2 

The father of Paidus was a clergyman in TVurtemberg, 
who was, at first, given up to a weak orthodoxy, and after- 
wards to an eccentric mysticism. From the home of his 
father, Paulus brought with him to the Gymnasium, be- 
sides a good philological foundation, skill in judging of 
human relations, and a distrust of everything miraculous. 
The latter could, indeed, be easily accounted for. His 
father, who could not tear himself away from the corpse 
of his wife, saw — so he affirmed — the dead person raising 
herself up. From that moment he gave himself up to 
the belief of an intercourse with the world of spirits, to a 
degree which soon incapacitated him for his office. That 

1 This conviction is brought forward as the fundamental prin- 
ciple of Rationalism in Rohfs letters on Rationalism, S. 45, ff. 

2 TTe follow, in this sketch, the biography of Reichlin—Msl- 
degg : H. E, G. Paulus und seine Zeit (Stuttgart, 1853 : 2 
vols.), a careful collection of materials, exact even to pedantry, 
but clumsily written. 



172 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMIXISM. 

self-deception — yea, that deceit was here practised, the 
boy was shrewd enough to see, and he himself sought to 
gladden his father by invented visions. In the Kloster- 
schule, and in the University of Tubingen^ the doctrines of 
the Church met him everywhere in a powerless form, 
while the theology and philosophy of Illuminism exhibited 
a vigorous appearance. Destitute of imagination, all the 
allurements of Romanticism passed over him powerless, 
while the philosophy of Wolff, mathematics, and psycho- 
logical historiography, fascinated him. " Although his 
faith, when measured by the prevailing catechism, had 
been very weak during the time he spent in his parental 
home and the Klosterschule, yet he was never satisfied 
with merely doubting, but was always anxious to procure 
to himself a true conviction of that which was credible 
and tenable in religion, — to separate, in everything, the 
original doctrines of Christianity and of the Church, from 
the later additions by the later symbolical mode of view- 
ing it. That only which he could understand and prove 
by his reason was to him a belief worth retaining ; and 
he became more and more convinced that, in theology, 
ethics was the thing essential, and that doctrinal theo- 
logy existed for the sake of ethics, not ethics for the sake 
of doctrinal theology. A doctrine seemed to him to pos- 
sess any value, only in the measure in which it contributed 
to make men wiser, and, for that very reason, better. 
When it contributed to stupify common intellectual sense, 
by being incomprehensible and self- contradictory, it had 
no existence for him, because he was able to receive 
that only which he learned to comprehend by means of 
arguments" (see 1. c. I., S. 45, f.). According to these 
principles, it soon, while he was yet in the university, be- 
came manifest to him, that the doctrine of justification 
through faith rested on a false interpretation of passages 



PAULUS. 173 

from St Paul. Righteousness is uprightness of heart, and 
faith fidelity of conviction. Whatever he did immediately 
after leaving the university, — studying, teaching, preach- 
ing, travelling, all was done in the service of Illuminism. 
Even in his betrothment he proceeded rationally. His 
strict father refused his consent to his betrothment to a 
near relative, and obstinately persevered in this refusal to 
the time of his death. But the son contradicted him from 
reason. It is impossible to read anything more rational 
than the instructive letter of the betrothed young man to 
his brothers and sisters (1. c. S., 153). In 1789 Paulus 
accepted a call to Jena, as Professor of Oriental Lan- 
guages. In that capacity, he devoted his special atten- 
tion to the Old Testament. By his entering, in 1793, 
upon a professorship of theology, he was induced to apply, 
to the New Testament also, the position which he occu- 
pied towards the Old. On entering upon his office he 
had to swear by the symbolical books ; this oath he jus- 
tified by a definition of the nature of orthodoxy, accord- 
ing to which he made it to signify, " upright conduct in 
inquiring after truth." What could resist such an exe- 
gesis ? neither the prophecies of the Old, nor the miracles 
of the New Testament. To prophesy — (iceissagen) — so 
Paulus set it forth in his " Philosophical Clavis on Isaiah" 
(1793), is just tantamount to saying something wise 
(iveises sagen.) The prophet uttered, from the ardour of 
his conviction, what, for the benefit of his people, he 
thought worthy of being uttered. Many things which 
are regarded as a foretelling of the future are just the 
very opposite, viz., a description of the past. The New 
Testament miracles — so Paulus proved in his celebrated 
philologico-critical commentary on the New Testament 
(1800) — disappear before a truly critical, grammatical, 
and especially psychological explanation. It was a holy 



174 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMESTSM. 

delusion that Mary should have conceived by the Holy 
Ghost ; and the angels at the birth of Christ may have 
been phosphorescent nocturnal phenomena, which are not 
uncommon in pastoral countries. The miraculous cures 
are explained from a historical ellipsis occurring in all of 
them, viz., the omission of the natural remedies ; the 
casting out of devils, from the power of a wise man over 
insane people ; and the raising of dead persons took place 
only in such as were apparently dead. The miracle at 
the marriage in Cana was a marriage joke ; the walking 
on the sea is explained from a single word (stti), which 
here does not mean upon, but at. The transfiguration of 
Christ is explained from the confused recollection of 
sleeping men, who saw Jesus with two unknown men 
standing in a beautiful mountain light. — The times had 
not sunk so deep as that opposition should not arise. A 
severe earnest word was addressed to Paulus by Lavater. 
Who can have read Lavater's letter on the walking on 
the sea (1. c. S. 266), written with the indignation of an 
evangelical heart, with annihilating clearness, and yet true 
humility and amicable affection — who can have read this 
letter without giving an entire assent to it ? But at that 
time Paulus was the man of reason, and Lavater the 
enthusiast. Paulus' activity as a teacher did not pass 
without the contradiction of the ecclesiastical authorities 
in Thuringia ; but the liberal Charles Augustus, and the 
large-hearted Herder took him under their protection. 
In Wurzburg, Bamberg, and Anspach, to which places 
Paulus went from Jena, he was entirely absorbed in prac- 
tical efforts ; for the point aimed at was to carry through 
Illuminism in education. The desire, however, of return- 
ing to theory induced him to go to Heidelberg (1811). 
The times changed ; but Paulus remained faithful to the 
conviction which he had already substantially embraced 



PAULUS. 175 

when he was in the university. And it was just that 
fidelity to conviction which constituted his religion. In 
Heidelberg, he carried on an untiring warfare of light 
against everything which he conceived to be darkness ; 
now against political absolutism (the King of Wurtem- 
berg interdicted him from his territories — his native 
country) ; then against abuses in the administration of 
justice ; at one time against the oppression of the Church, 
at another, against a transcendental philosophy; now 
against Jesuitism, then against Protestant mysticism and 
orthodoxy. Yery much like Krug in the north, he was 
in the south of Germany — " a man who gave his opinion 
on every important event, whether it appeared in the 
Heidelberger Jahrbucher, or in the Sophronizon, or in 
a pamphlet." His indestructible liberalism took even 
" Young Germany" and Strauss under its wings ; to the 
German Catholics he has bequeathed a legacy. It was 
impossible for the octogenarian friend of light to bear 
the secret of Schilling's philosophy of revelation. He 
published the lectures of the mysterious philosopher, whom 
nothing grieved more than to be robbed of his ideas. 
The old man, always jealous, and declaiming for pro- 
gress, at last appeared with his Illuminism of 1790, 
like a spectre from the eighteenth century. He reached 
his 90th year. On the 31st July 1851, he still dictated : 
u Active practical faith in the few doctrines which are 
conducive to ethics, is necessary in order to be always 
and beforehand determined to be willing, from self-convic- 
tion, to live for that only which is right ; so that neither 
cunning nor force are able to disturb this disposition pro- 
duced in the depth of the mind." And on his last day 
(10th August 1851) he said, " I stand just before God, 
bj having willed that which is right " (1. c. S. 451, ff). 
Paiclus was convinced that his rationalism was the 



176 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMIXIS3I. 

original Christianity. That this Rationalism was the 
moving power of Church history, the Church historians of 
this school could not well affirm ; wherever they turned, 
there was too much of what they called the irrational. 
Although they had nothing to object to the spreading of 
Christianity, yet they had much against the spirit by 
which the missionaries were actuated. These historians 
felt ill at ease in the times of the martyrs. The paucitas 
martyrum was, it is true, a comfort, but it was a very poor 
one. What meaning could be assigned to the centuries 
of controversies on the Trinity and the God-manhood of 
Christ, if the Trinity was looked upon as a nonsensical 
theory, and Christ as a mere man ? And if, after the 
thousand years' night of the middle ages, they greeted 
the morning dawn of the Reformation, yet they could not 
overlook the dark clouds with which the doctrine of jus- 
tification through faith, the Augustinian view of sin and 
death, and the controversies regarding the Lord's Supper, 
covered the rising sun. Yea, even the sun of the Illumin- 
ism of the eighteenth century was not without spots. 
Whatever traces of Providence might be pointed out h\ 
the details of Church history, the chasm between the 
rational primitive Christianity and the Ilhiminism of the 
eighteenth century was too great to be filled up by their 
preconceived views, although with them rationalism could 
accomplish much. With an exposition of Scripture which 
resolved the miracles into natural events, corresponded 
the art of Illuminism, which understood so dexterously 
how to derive the great deeds of the past from the 
common places of the experience of common life, that the 
observer could go away with the feeling, " Tout comme 
chez nous" Who does not here think of Planck f Too 
thoroughly has this theologian examined the sources ; too 
sagacious are his combinations for us not, even now 3 to be 



RATIONALISM . 177 

benefited by him. And yet one must call it a penal 
labour to wind one's way through this confusion of inter- 
polations, conjectures, combinations, without a spirit 
congenial, and equal to the task, without true judgment. 
More happy in the form, more original in the conception, 
was Spittler. But one understands what opinion this 
historian can have had of the principal phenomena of 
Church history, when one reads the commencement : " The 
world never yet experienced a revolution which, in its first 
causes, was so insignificant, and in its ultimate, far-spread- 
ing consequences, was so remarkable as that which a 
Jew, living eighteen hundred years ago, called Jesus, 
made in a few years of his life." The most important 
representative of the historiography of Rationalism is 
HenJce. He excels Planch in facility of representation, 
in the delicacy of his argumentation, in acuteness of know- 
ledge, and strength of will. However dogmatically he 
has judged of the most important phenomena of the past 
history of the Church, yet, as regards him, one has the 
feeling that he is in real earnest with his Rationalism ; a 
hue of character manifests itself in his Church history. 
And that lie proved in his life also. He remained a Ger- 
man at the time of Jerome's Kingdom, and when the 
University of Helmstadt broke down, his heart broke 
with it. 1 

The systematic theology of Rationalism lies before us 
in extensive works (EcJcermann, Bretschneider, Weg- 
sclieider), and yet the sum and substance of the positive 
which Rationalism advances is small ; and even this little 
it has not systematically developed, as we have already 
remarked. But it had to settle with the doctrine of the 
Church, against which it leans, in the same way, it may 

1 Vollmar.n and Wolff, Heinrich Philipp Conrad Hmke,l§\(j. 

M 



178 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMiXISM. 

be, as the sons of the wilderness lean their tents against 
the ruins of destroyed temples. That which the Greek, 
the Roman, and the two Protestant Churches hold fast as 
the legacy of the old Catholic Church : viz., faith in the 
Father, who has manifested himself in the God-man, to 
redeem those who, by the power of His Spirit, believe in 
Him, — that Rationalism has changed into the belief in 
the one God, which the wise and virtuous man Jesus 
Christ has taught, in order that, believing in His doctrine, 
and following in His walk, we may attain our aim in His 
kingdom — the kingdom of the spirit of truth and virtue. 
It rejects a divine personality of the Son and Spirit as 
distinguished from the Father, and all which may seem to 
allude to it — as perhaps in. Bohr's Grund und Glau- 
benssatzen 1 — is simply explained from the desire of accom- 
modating itself to the usus loquendi of the Church. That 
which Rationalism teaches of Christ does not reach even 
to the Ebionitic stand-point, because (not to speak of the 
Ebionites, who taught the conception by the Holy Spirit) 
the Rationalist does not acknowledge the working of 
the Holy Spirit, in the Old Testament sense. The Socin- 
ians have gone much farther, for they acknowledged the 
conception by the Holy Spirit, the sinlessness, miraculous 
power, ascension to heaven, etc. Like the Socinians, the 
Rationalists declare the doctrine and example to have 
been the main purpose of the mission of Jesus. The 
death of Christ is to be explained purely historically, 
from the opposition with which Christ's efforts to make 
men happy were met by the Jewish rulers. For the bene- 

1 S. 63 : " Christ acquired just claims to the highest dignity 
among all rational beings, and to the name (a) of the only be- 
gotten Son of God; (b) of the Saviour of the world; (c) of the 
Mediator between God and man ; (d) of the Redeemer : (e) of the 
Lord of Christendom ; (/) of the King and Ruler of the kingdom 
of God established by Him." 



RATIONALISM. 179 

fit of the weak ones, says Wegscheider (Instit.) S. 142. 
p. 509, 7th ed.), the death of Christ may be represented 
as a symbol that the sacrifices are abolished, and God 
reconciled to man ; as a symbol of the establishment of 
the new covenant ; or as a symbol of the love of God, 
and of the love of Jesus to us ; " only," so he adds, " let 
Christian teachers take good care lest thereby they put a 
plaster on the consciences of bad men, by laying too much 
stress on the expiatory power of the blood of Christ, by 
which God, like a bloodthirsty Moloch, has been recon- 
ciled. Let them rather look to this, that they exhort 
every sinner to a change of life, and, as much as possible, 
to a restitution for injury caused." While the old 
Rationalism viewed the supernatural events of Christ's 
life, especially the miracles which He performed and 
experienced, as natural events, the later Rationalism, 
which had become aware of the irrationality of these 
natural explanations (even Hermann has ridiculed the 
exegetical miracles of those who thus explained the 
miracles), wrote on the whole territory a non liquet. 
The evangelists, so they said, were, it is true, men who, in 
a high, degree, loved the truth, but were too uneducated 
to form a truly scientific opinion on that which was really 
before them. One may allow that to rest as it is ; it is, 
after all, secondary. As regards the resurrection of 
Christ especially, the old Rationalism (Faulus) had re- 
course to the supposition of an apparent death — a subter- 
fuge which the later Rationalists did not advance with- 
out a certain timidity and caution. "The idea of an 
apparent death," says Bret Schneider (Handbuch der Dog- 
matik, II., S. 231) need not be thought to be something 
dangerous, inasmuch as even in that case the revival of 
Jesus would be an unmistakeable work of Providence ; 
and the occurrence of such an unheard-of event, and that 



180 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUM1NISM. 

just in the case of Jesus, could not but be considered .as a 
special arrangement of God, distinctly declaring that 
Jesus was the Christ." Wegscheider does not mean to 
deny that the apostle Paul has laid great emphasis on 
this fact ; but, at the same time, it is also certain that 
Christ has not rested His doctrine on this foundation, and 
that the truth of Christianity is based upon its rational 
contents. "Let us only hold fast that Christ returned to 
life, and that this was a distinguished proof of Divine Pro- 
vidence" (Instit. p. 474). With greater courage the 
myths of Hercules and Romulus are referred to, in treat- 
ing of the ascension. What the doctrine of the Church 
calls the third person of the Godhead, is nothing else than 
a personification of the working of God. Since Rational- 
ism thus gave up the oecumenical belief in a triune God, 
it was compelled to give quite a different meaning to the 
Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. It is not by 
outward works, nor by a merit imputed to him, but only 
by faith, and by a disposition of mind directed to Christ's 
example and doctrine, to God's holiness and goodness, 
that man obtains God's favour. Man can practice vir- 
tue, because he is destined to do so. The doctrine of 
original sin is a gloomy delusion. Although all men are, 
more or less, sinners, that has its foundation solely in 
their will, and may be accounted for by the power of 
sensuality, by the epidemic force of example, etc. It is 
only pietists and mystics who can speak of an immediate 
operation of God upon the soul. The word and sacra- 
ments operate in a manner altogether natural. In the 
doctrine of the sacraments, the Rationalists, of course, 
agreed with Zwingle. Baptism is a right of consecra- 
tion ; the Lord's Supper a meal in remembrance of the 
death of Christ. The Eschatology, they reduced to a 
recompensing future life. The immortality of the soul, 



RATIONALISM. 181 

we have already seen above (p, 79), was a favourite doc- 
trine of Illuminism. Great is the number of works which 
endeavour to prove this belief from the simplicity of the 
soul, from the capacity of the mind for development, from 
the claim of the virtuous to reward, from our longing 
after re-union with our beloved ones. Kant, so we like- 
wise saw, reduced these arguments to a mere axiom. The 
Leipzic philosopher, Wotzel, confesses that, as a man 
and a Christian, he gave himself up to this belief, but 
that, as a philosopher, he was not firm in it. Then, in a 
miraculous manner, he obtained certainty. For his wife, 
from whom he had once received the promise that, in case 
she should die before him, she should give him tangible 
proof of her continuing to live, had really appeared to 
him after her death, and that at midnight and noon, with 
the words, "We shall see one another again." 1 This 
communication was, of course, a welcome prey for the 
literary birds of prey of Illuminism. The fact, however, 
that the author was a philosopher, occasioned some 
difficulty, and whatever was advanced against his im- 
portance as such, he very well knew what he was 
doing, and was, moreover, ready to take an oath upon 
it before the Senatus Academicus in Leipzig. Here the 
theologians of Illuminism had a case to try the weapons 
with which they had struck down the miraculous contents 
of the gospels. The whole, so old Wieland assured in 
his "Euthanasia" (1805), with a wit which was then 
already expiring, was the work of a jester. In general, 
he added, the arguments in favour of the immortality of 
the soul are very weak. Without this body, the continu- 
ance of a personal existence is inconceivable ; virtue is 

1 Wotzel published several pamphlets od the event in 1804-5. 
The literature of this suhjeetis given by BreiscJmeider, Syste- 
mat u eke Eidwickelung, etc., S. 832. 



182 THE THEOLOGY OF 1IXUMINISM. 

reward enough to itself: people will employ life better 
when death is regarded as the termination of it. The 
author of the " First remarkable Apparition of a Ghost in 
the nineteenth century " (1805), exercises Semler's art ; 
and the Brunswick Superintendent, Hellmiith. undertook 
the exegesis of Dr Paulus. By means of his knowledge 
of natural science, he made it probable that the ghost-like 
breathing had been caused by a nocturnal butterfly of the 
family of the firelickers (py ratifies) ; the noise at the win- 
dow by a night-crow {Caprimulgus Europaeus) ; the ap- 
parition by night, by a concave mirror, and by day, by a 
dream. Wotzel answered perseveringly. But Illuudn- 
ism, which had got the better of Swedenborg, Schropfer. 
Gassner, etc., did not yield. 

Let us now. in closing, cast a glance on the manner in 
which Rationalism showed itself in practice, and appeared 
in the Church. Scripture, the past history of the Church, 
the doctrine of the Church, were facts which could not 
protest against the proceedings of Rationalism : but the 
religious convictions of the congregations could do so : and 
they had still institutions, rights, traditions, to support 
and protect them. To these convictions the Rationalists, 
on the one hand, came down, and met them by the prin- 
ciple of accommodation. A strange circle indeed ! From 
their practice, the Rationalists had introduced into the 
evangelical history the motive of accommodation, in order 
thereby to remove whatever did not agree with the image 
of Christ and the apostles, as the fathers of Rationalism ; 
and now this idea returned from theory to practice, in 
order to cloak the proceedings of Rationalism. If Christ, 
by way of accommodation to the popular usus hquend.L had 
called the evil principle, devil, why should a Rationalist, 
who considered the devil to be a mere personification of 
the popular belief, not speak also of a devil? On the 



RATIONALISM. 183 

other hand, however, the convictions of the congregations, 
which had been probably shaken in the age of Illumin- 
ism, met Rationalism so far, that the latter might ima- 
gine that the time could not be very far distant when the 
veil of accommodation would drop. In the sermon, Ration- 
alism was fettered by prescribed biblical texts. Where 
it was not feasible to select more convenient passages 
than the traditional lessons and texts — e. g. from Sirach 
— a wide field was opened up by the art of transitions, ap- 
plications, etc. He who has witnessed the practice of 
many Rationalists will not find it incredible that in the 
Christmas lesson the manger furnished occasion for 
economical expositions ; in the lesson for Easter, the 
early walk of the women to the grave, gave a wished-for 
point of connection for exhortations to early rising, etc. 
What the Rationalist detracted from faith he added to 
morality ; in it men, such as Zollikofer, Spalding, Teller, 
Henke, etc., sought their strength. With respect to the 
form of the rationalistic sermon, it had, from principle, 
a doctrinal and argumentative character; the man of 
reason just wrought with arguments of reason. At first, 
this mode of preaching might obtain the applause of the 
congregations : to the charm of the practical and clear, 
that of the novel, of opposition to the existing, was added. 
But when Rationalism stood there as victor, the churches 
emptied to the same extent that the theatres were filled. 
The common saying, that one might say to oneself what 
was heard there, was not without foundation. The gift 
of fascinating by art, and by the spirit of eloquence, was 
not granted to every one ; he who possessed it might hope 
to learn from the ancient orators. In Saxony, the seat 
of classical studies, the study of Demosthenes and Cicero, 
for the sake of pulpit eloquence, had the example of Rein- 
liard, and the theory of Schott in its favour. And it was 



184 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUHIXISM. 

not only from the rhetoric of the ancients, but also from 
the poetry of the time then present, that the rationalistic 
sermon thought to be able to benefit. How many morn- 
ing dawns, starry lustres, full moons, flower seas, greet- 
ings of love and friendship, night and grave thoughts, etc., 
may, at that time, have filled the pulpits ! As Kant says, 
they preached in prose run mad ; and from thence it was 
not very far to the opinion : 

" I often heard it said that a pastor might be benefited by the 
lessons of an actor." 

The apostle proclaimed the foolishness of the cross, not 
in the eloquent words of human wisdom ; but of such 
preaching, that of the present was the very opposite ; so 
that, in the language of the educated, the preacher soon 
became a pulpit orator, the congregation a public which 
gave or withheld its applause, according as the discourses 
had pleased or not pleased them. Still the hymn-books 
bore witness to the old faith. The practice of Rational- 
ism was either to omit the old hymns from the new hymn- 
books, or to change them so as to suit Illuminism, or to 
introduce new hymns, the matter of which was in har- 
mony with the spirit of the time. In the old well- 
known hymn of praise : " To Him the triune God," 
they read, "To Him the thrice great God." They 
changed, from geographical scrupulosity, the words : u The 
whole world is asleep," into, " Half the world is asleep." 
They composed hymns about eternity : " I believe in 
eternity ; I am convinced by reasons ; and the more I 
inquire, the more I find them in me." — Still, the litur- 
gical forms were bearing witness to the old faith. The 
mode in which Rationalism here proceeded has been 
exhibited to us in the life of D inter, one of the chief men 
of the school. 1 They were anxious to set aside the exor- 
i Dinters Leben, S. 116. 



RATIONALISM. 185 

cism, the old baptismal formula in general, private con- 
fession, the liturgy, the traditional responses, etc., but the 
congregations were still attached to them. Thus, a 
peasant, who insisted upon having the exorcism in bap- 
tism, is quieted by the remark of the clergyman : he 
should have it at all events, as they were allowed to omit 
it in the case of people of rank and education only. At 
a banquet, the peasants are persuaded to give up the 
baptismal formula. With private confession, Dinter dis- 
gusted the peasants by the uncommon length to which he 
extended it. In a still more summary way that country 
minister may have proceeded, whom Claudius makes to 
write that excellent letter, from which we have already, 
on another occasion, quoted : " I don't tell you anything 
of the empty ceremonies : I don't observe them any more ; 
I don't observe almost anything at all. I have the honour 
to be," etc. In the School, Rationalism wrought just in 
the way of clearing up — i. e. } setting aside old things 
according to the principle of contradiction, and introduc- 
ing new things according to the principle of the sufficient 
reason. In the elementary schools, the old catechisms 
were abolished ; in the gymnasia, the orthodox hand- 
books. The art of an elementary teacher consisted in 
drawing forth the principles of religion and virtue, from 
the awakening reason of the child, by means of the so- 
called Socratic method. That these principles did not 
agree with the doctrine of the Church, the enlightened 
educationist confessed to himself and others : but that 
they agreed with Scripture, he learned and taught from 
Dinter s Bible for teachers, which made the practical the 
measure for Scripture exposition. What Dinter was for 
the elementary school, Niemyer was for the gymnasia and 
higher education. Those who came from these schools 
to the university did not easily avoid Rationalism. 



186 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINIS3I. 

There can be no doubt that, about the beginning of 
the present century, Rationalism had the supremacy in 
theology ; but yet it was not without opposition. Its 
opponent in principle was Supernaturalism — L e., that 
theological school which made the revelation laid down 
in Scripture the test of religious truth. The most im- 
portant representatives of these views were Reirikard in 
the north of Germany, and Storr in the south. He who 
considers that Supernaturalism was a child of that tran- 
sition period, cannot entertain the opinion that the stand- 
point of Supernaturalism was the same as that of the 
orthodoxy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It 
put an altogether inferior value on the agreement with 
the doctrine laid down in the symbolical books ; it was 
the substance and essence only to which it held. From 
Scripture, indeed, it would vindicate its position and pro- 
positions ; but in its view of Scripture, it was more or less 
dependent upon Tollner's views on inspiration, Semler's 
Criticism, and Emestis Exegesis. It professed that the 
right of decision lay with Scripture, and not with reason ; 
but, in determining what was the doctrine of Scripture, 
reason had a weighty influence. If Rationalism reminds 
us strongly of Socinianism, Supernaturalism does of 
Arminianism. The doctrines of the Trinity, of the union 
of the two natures in Christ, of the mystical indwelling 
of the Holy Spirit, were not denied, but neither was any 
stress laid upon them ; and, avoiding systematically to 
elaborate them, it gave them, if possible, a practical turn. 1 



1 Morns says, in the doctrine of the Trinity : " Caeterum 
missis studiis niiniis definiendi quae roaxime sit trium illorum 
interior relatio, a Patro per Filium and Spiritum Sanctum ex- 
spectamus and petimus ea beneficia," etc. ; in the doctrine of 
the divine nature of Christ: " Ab omni studio explicandae de- 
finiendaeque rei quemlibet modestum et concordiae amantem 



BUPEBNATCRAIJ8M. 187 

Christ was the Son of God, subordinate to the Father, 
the Redeemer of mankind from the bonds of error, sin. 
and death. Original sin was more or less changed into 
a disposition for evil: and, for that very reason, man's 
agency in appropriating salvation was prominently brought 
forward, in a way more or less strongly Pelagian. The 
work of the Holy Spirit was rather loosely expressed. In 
the definitions of the Church, wisdom and virtue occupied 
as prominent a place as, in the Eschatology. the striving 
for progress in goodness and truth. The ethics of Super- 
naturalism stand so near to that of Rationalism, that the 
opinion of the latter that it was a neutral territory, had 
indeed sufficient ground. 1 

* Strict systematic connection, unity of principles, logi- 
cal thinking on religion, take place only when one adheres 
altogether either to reason or to Scripture ; it is only the 
Rationalist and the Supernaturalist who are really consist- 
ent. It is obvious, that one becomes inconsistent, loses a 

deterrere potest ecelesiastica historia, recensens multa odia, 
vocabula, concilia, chismata." 

1 On JReinhard's ethics De Wette thus judges, in the Berlin 
Zeitschrift, 1820, H. 2., S. 74 : Reinhard is known as a strict 
supernaturalist, but nothing of Supernaturalism has hitherto 
become visible in his system of ethics. There is wanting, in 
the first instance, the principle of the revealed Divine Word in 
Christ, as the highest rule of morals ; and, in the second place, 
the principle of the Divine Spirit. The precepts of Christ and 
the apostles are much spoken of, but they are always only 
adapted to the rational principle. The human need of salvation, 
and faith in Christ founded thereon, are, indeed, mentioned as 
a source of Christian love ; but that need of salvation is not pro- 
perly established, as the idea of original sin is misrepresented, 
and reason is exempted from it, and the connection of Christian 
love with Christian faith, remains unintelligible. The influence 
of the Holy Spirit could not find a place in this system which 
does not acknowledge the affections as a mental principle, but 
entirely confounds the self-acting springs of the affections 
with the aspirations of man through the medium of his intellect. 



188 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMINISM. 

sufficient all-determining principle which regulates all 
our cognition, as soon as a middle path is entered upon, 
as soon as one refuses to make Scripture and reason 
subordinate to one another, and insists upon making them 
co-ordinate." Thus declared Reinhard in his Confessions. 
Theoretically, he was, no doubt, right ; but, practically, 
the Supernaturalists themselves had entered upon a 
middle path. In this respect, they stood on one and the 
same ground with the Rationalists, that they viewed 
religion as, substantially, a matter of knowledge. Our 
reason can, by its own power, question this knowledge, 
said the Rationalists. No, replied the Supernaturalists, 
we require a higher communication in order to know what 
is necessary for salvation. But that which the Super- 
naturalists brought forward as the higher communication, 
was so intelligible, practical, and moral, that Lessing's 
saying about a revelation which reveals nothing, might 
well be applied to it by the Rationalists. Thus much one 
may affirm, in order that all praise may be given to truth, 
without being blind to the great merit of the men who, at 
this period of dissolution, still held fast the divine founda- 
tion of Christianity, and thus, between the doctrine of the 
Church of the past and of the future, formed a bridge, how- 
ever exposed and endangered its pillars might be in the 
ice-floods of that time. Those words of Reinhard caused 
a movement in which a middle school came out with its 
claims and demands. " I cannot," said Tzschirner in his 
letters, called forth by Reinhard's Confessions (S. 78), 
" agree with Reinhard's judgment on the absolute con- 
tradiction between Rationalism and Supernaturalism, 
and am convinced that one may still believe in the divine 
origin of Christianity, even although one does not receive 
the contents of Scripture in all their extent. I think 
that system also, which brings forward an idea of reason 



SUP KRNATURALISM. 189 

as the highest rule of faith, and according to its standard, 
judges of the contents of Scripture which have been 
delivered to us, may consider Christianity as a higher 
revelation, and the Bible as a collection of writings of 
men sent by God ; provided that the object of revelation 
be not viewed as the disclosure of that which cannot be 
known by unassisted reason, but rather as the establish- 
ment of the Church, and the confirmation of the religion 
of reason by the authority of a Divine Ambassador. It 
appears to me, therefore, that Rationalism is reconcileable 
with the belief of the higher origin of Christianity ; and 
I am thus accustomed carefully to distinguish the Ration- 
alism which, although vindicating the supremacy of 
reason, yet holds fast the idea of a supernatural revela- 
tion, — which acknowledges the truth of sacred history, 
the Bible as the record of revelation, and the Church as 
an institution established by Providence, aiming at the 
promotion of morality, — from Naturalism, which rejects 
the idea of revelation as a delusion and deception, denies 
the truth of evangelical history, declares the Bible to be 
merely a human book, and the Church a union which 
has arisen by chance." This was the so-called rational 
Supernaturalism, a stand-point which Locke had previously 
maintained in his work " On the Reasonableness of Chris- 
tianity.''' Christianity is a revelation; but the matter of this 
revelation is reasonable. Supernaturalism and Rationalism 
came, in this view, so near one another, that distinguished 
representatives of them could go even from Superna- 
turalism to Rationalism (Bretschieider, Sc/iott), without 
substantially changing their position. Dinter claims 
to be considered as a rational Supernaturalist ; but one 
may unhesitatingly regard him as a Rationalist. Ammon, 
in his controversy with Schleiermacher, who (and with 
him, the theological world) had hitherto considered him 



190 THE THEOLOGY OF ILLUMIXISM. 

as a Rationalist, could assure him that, so far as twenty- 
two years back, he had professed rational Supernaturalism, 
and that, for this reason, he had been abused by many 
Rationalists. Scale iermacher answered : " The reference 
to a preface twenty-two years old, in which M. Amnion has 
already openly and distinctly professed rational Super- 
naturalism, is of very little use to me ; for I know as little 
as nothing when I am told that some one has, however 
openly, declared, twenty- two years ago, for something by 
which, I believe, even to-day no one knows to think of any- 
thing definite and distinct, as little as twenty- two years 
ago. I, for my part at least, feel quite uneasy when I hear 
the Ra, and the Irra, and the Supra, rushing forth, because 
it appears to me that this terminology becomes more and 
more hopelessly confused. But in order that the concert 
may be complete in all its parts, I beg earnestly, in addition 
to the irrational and rational Supernaturalism, to propose 
not only a supernaturalistie rationalism and irrationalism, 
but also a naturalistic and unnaturalistic super-rationalism. 
And when those harnessed sons of the earth, for none of 
them could be of a higher origin, shall stand there in 
complete array, I hope that the old desire of killing one 
another will seize them. But as regards M. Amnions 
rationalistic Supernaturalism, it is indeed a strange thing 
with a system which, as he himself says, by a gradual 
tuning taking place at measured periods, has been brought 
up to the proper height, so as to fall in with the pure tone 
of the Church (Werke, V. S. 417). 

Ammon has practically confessed by his later develop- 
ment, that the stand-point, which he at that time occupied, 
was untenable. Tzchirner. also, cannot have been strongly 
convinced of the tenable nature of this middle position, 
inasmuch as, in his lectures on Systematic Theology, he 
allowed his hearers to choose between Supernaturalism 



SUPERXATURALISM. ] 9 1 

and Rationalism. Nowhere did the medium stand-point 
of neutralization, the eclectic dividing and portioning 
out, appear to be more untenable than in the history of 
the Church. The feeble neutrality of rational Super- 
naturalism could not be the solution of the opposite ten- 
dencies. The eighteenth century handed them over 
unsolved to the nineteenth century. 



SECOND BOOK. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE RENOVATION. 



The Subjectivism of the eighteenth century centered, as 
we saw, in Ficlite. This height of Idealism, however, 
Fichte himself was not able to maintain ; he steered more 
and more towards Realism both in his philosophy and in 
his life. But it was not for him only, that that height 
became the turning point, but for his time also. Two 
streams have taken their rise there, which have conveyed 
rich elements of life to the nineteenth century, — a specu- 
lative tendency, the heads of which are Schelling and 
Hegel; and a tendency of the immediate religious life, 
the most distinguished representative of which is Schleier- 
macher. 

Schelling, in his first minor productions, followed alto- 
gether in the track of Fichte; but as early as in the 
ft Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism " (1795), the traces 
are clearly found of his stepping beyond the Idealism of 
Fichte. The stand-point of Kant, who submits the 
objective existence to thinking (Criticism), as well as that 
of Spinoza, who submits thinking to the objective ex- 
istence (Dogmatism), is one-sided. In the meantime, 
however, Schelling contents himself with having pointed 
out the higher unity of both stand-points. He directed 

N 



194 THE RENOVATION. 

his regards towards a territory which Fkhte had left un- 
cultivated — viz.. to the Philosophy of Nature. On differ- 
ent sides, desires and efforts had, at that time, been put 
forward, to rise from the inquiries into the particulars of 
nature, to a view of its general life. 1 In a number of 
writings, following each other in quick succession (from 
1796 to 1799). he published Ideen zu einer Philosophic 
der Natur [Ideas on a Philosophy of Nature], Von der 
Weltseele [On the mundane Soul], Erster Entwurf ernes 
Systems der Natur [First Sketch of a System of Nature], he 
gave to these efforts a great expression. At firstj Schelling 
attempted to prove, from its own ways, that that investiga- 
tion of nature, did not perform what it promised, and that 
it was in a higher view of the whole only, that the solution 
of its contradictions was to be found. At a subsequent 
period the settling of the relations of the individual 
sciences, stepped into the background. It is here that the 
philosophical genius of Scheliing comes out most promi- 
nently : surprising glances into the whole, most ingenious 
combinations, poetical conception and style. Schelling 
beholds in nature two powers pervading one another ; one 
working into the infinite, and one opposing it, by which 
it is obliged to individualise itself, just as a stream, by 
some obstacle in its course, is obliged to divide itself. 
The effect of this co-operation of powers opposing one 
another is organised nature. — The lightenings of Sclid- 
luig's genius kindled everywhere, just because the soil 
was volcanic. The Ego lost in idealistic webs, greeted, 
with mysterious forebodings, a world of thoughts behind 
the phenomena of nature. The powers which worked in 
the light, the magnet, or electricity, appeared to be analo- 
gous to the powers of the mind. s; The mind also," says 
Schelling, "is a world, consisting in the co-operation of 

1 For particulars, see Rose?iJ:ra?iz (1843), S. 39. 



SCHELL1XG. 195 

opposed powers." Stefens, Schubert, Oken, and others, 
proceeded, with the impulses which they had received 
from Schelling, to the investigation of the life of the 
universe, not, indeed, without being much ridiculed by 
professional men, but yet not without bringing out some 
important and lasting results in particulars, and opening 
up a way for an aim which naturalists in their researches 
cannot again abandon. Although Schelling's Philosophy 
of Xature was used for establishing a foundation for Ma- 
terialism {Oken). yet it was an important stage in the 
way on which we see the German mind entering since 
the beginning of the century — viz., the way of reconcil- 
ing the subject with reality. It has prepared a more 
profound, more Christian contemplation of nature, and 
has set up a barrier against the self-complacency of 
superficial education, which waged war against Scripture, 
with the perceptions of the ordinary course of nature. 
The mystery in which it saw the universe moving, has, in 
many of its disciples, awakened the longing for a higher 
mystery {Schubert. Siefens). When the master had 
quickly traversed the territory of the Philosophy of 
Nature, he represented his entire view in a number of 
writings, which followed one another in rapid succession, 
and among which System cles transccndentalen Idealis- 
mus (System of transcendental Idealism, 1800), and 
Vorlesungen uber die Methode des Aeademischen Sta- 
diums (Lectures on the Method of Academical Study, 
1803), are the most important. Neither the Ego nor the 
non-Ego, neither Idealism nor Realism is the truth, but the 
identity of both. God is the absolute which represents 
itself as divided into the spheres of mind and nature, just 
as in the magnet we perceive the difference of the posi- 
tive and negative poles. Spinoza's spirit was revived in 
this view. As Spinoza's substance is the negation of all 



196 THE RENO TATION . 

finite phenomena — which are comprehended in the two 
attributes, extension and thought, material and spiritual 
world — and yet manifests itself only in bringing forth 
these finite phenomena ; so Schelling's God is the neu- 
trum of Idealism and Realism, of nature and mind, and 
yet exists only in the process of his transition and change 
into these particular forms ; just as the point of indiffer- 
ence of the magnet, which is neither north-pole nor 
south-pole, and yet is indifference only in so far as a dif- 
ference exists. The essential difference between Spinoza 
and Schelling consists in this, that the latter conceives, in 
a more positive manner, of the relation between the ab- 
solute and the particular phenomena, as a vital pro- 
cess. This doctrine was, no doubt, an inference from 
Fichte's. The Ego, which could not get rid of the non- 
Ego, proved itself to be finite. It was only one step to 
say : neither the Ego nor the non-Ego, but the identity 
of both is the truth. — Schelling, however, soon abandoned 
this position ; his philosophy became, under the influence 
of Jacob Bohnie, theosophy. In his treatise, Ueber die 
Freiheit (on liberty, 1809), God is conceived of as will. 
The discord of the vital process in God, the opposition of 
the pure will in God to a natural ground in God, manifests 
tself in the course of the world, which represents the 
struggle of freedom against blind necessity. One might 
almost say that this view stands in the same relation to the 
former as Parsiism does to Brahminism. After this, 
Schelling, for a longer period, withdrew from the scene of 
philosophy. 

In the meanwhile, another {Hegel) had taken the lead 
in philosophy. Kant came out in his strength when an 
old man ; Ficlite and Schelling reached the zenith of their 
glorious career when still in youth — Fichte being the 
youthful philosopher, striving upwards like a Titan, while 



hegel.; 197 

Schelling was the youth of creative genius. Hegel, on the 
other hand, stands before us as a man. He was not pos- 
sessed of Fichte" s ardent desire for deeds, nor of Schelling 9 s 
philosophical poetry, but of a power of philosophical ab- 
straction, of a consistency of thought, of a thoroughness 
of methodical deduction, of an extent of knowledge such 
as very few only have shown in the history of philo- 
sophy. If, after all, we wish to judge of modern philo- 
sophy from its own stand-point, we must say that HegeVs 
philosophy is the fruit of the blossoms of the philosophy 
of Fichte and Schelling. As Fichte started from Kant, 
as Schelling from Fichte, so Hegel started from Schelling. 
But he soon found a twofold error in Schelling 's doctrine 
of identity — a formal and a material one. Schelling, it is 
true, was a disciple of Fichte; but that very thing, in 
which the strength of the Wissenckaftslehre lies, viz., the 
strict methodical deduction of ail the results of philoso- 
phy, from one principle, he never accomplished. He 
never attained to a method : he demanded the so-called 
intellectual intuition. This, indeed, was tantamount to 
granting the system at the outset. But this demand, 
Hegel says, must be proved. Philosophy stands or fails 
with its method. The fundamental material mistake of 
the doctrine of identity is this, that the absolute is not 
the concrete, but the neutral unity of nature and mind. 
The substance of Schelling is, as it were, the " dark in 
which all cats are grey." These thoughts pervade the 
preface of his Phanomenologie des Geistes (1807). The 
object of this work, which Hegel afterwards used to call 
his voyage of discovery, 1 is to demonstrate how all the 
positions which consciousness assumes towards objective 
being, resolve themselves, by their inner dialectics, into 

1 Michelet. History of the last systems of Philosophy in Ger- 
many. II., S. 616. 



198 THE RENOVATION. 

that stand-point with which philosophy begins, viz., the 
stand-point of the thinking, which knows itself to be iden- 
tical with being. The great difficulties which are offered 
to the study of this work, lie mainly in the undeveloped 
state of the whole stand-point ; but the foundation of it 
is clearly expressed. The absolute is the concrete unity 
of nature and mind, of being and thinking ; but this unity 
is the Notion. The Notion is not only the absolute con- 
tents of thinking, but also the substance of all being. 
Every thing which is, in nature as in the life of mankind, 
is a form of the Notion. This Notion, in its logical sub- 
stance, is treated of in his Logic — the principal work of 
Hegel, which he wrote during his rectorship in Nurem- 
berg (1808-16). Thinking, which views its matter, not 
as subjective thoughts merely, but as the substance of all 
being, evolves its logical contents by means of the abso- 
lute method. " This realm is the truth as it appears in 
itself and without covering. One may, therefore, well 
say, that these contents are the representation of God as 
He is in His eternal being before the creation of nature, 
and of the finite mind." Just as with Spinoza and 
Schelling, God is in reality a logical definition only, 
whether it be called substance or absolute : so with Hegel 
also, God is a logical idea only — viz., the Notion itself. 
Starting from pure being, Hegel shows how the most 
general Notion points beyond itself, condenses itself into 
Notions more and more concrete, until at last it centres 
in the absolute Notion. The categories, which Logic had 
hitherto treated as purely formal definitions, are here 
viewed as thoughts full of meaning, as stages by which 
the Notion rises to a higher stage. Hegel shows how 
each of these stages has found its expression in some 
philosophy. Brahminism viewed God as Being, Leibnitz 
as Monad, Pythagoras, as Number, Spinoza as Substance, 



HEGEL. 1 99 

etc. Thus, this work becomes a logical theogony, and 
dialectic judgment of the world. Whatever paths the 
human mind may yet enter upon, this Logic will remain 
one of its greatest works. After Hegel had thus given 
the metaphysical foundation of his system, he found him- 
self called upon, by his position as Professor of Philosophy 
in Heidelberg (since 1816) to bring out the sketch of his 
system in his "Encyclopaedia of Philosophy" (1817). God 
is the absolute Notion, in whom thinking and being are 
identical ; but this absolute Notion has a purely logical 
existence. Just as Spinoza s Substance, Sdielling's Ab- 
solute, although infinite, yet exists only by producing the 
finite, so the logical truth exists really only by giving 
existence to itself in nature and finite mind. The Notion 
exists in nature as an immediate reality in a number of 
stages, in which its essence manifests itself more and more 
clearly. Nature is the dumb mind, the Notion fettered 
by the bands of matter. The highest stage which it 
attains is life; it receives consciousness in the human 
mind only. The single individual {subjective mind) en- 
joys the liberty of recognising objectively in the spheres' 
of jurisprudence, morals, and politics {objective mind) ; — 
and to strive after this liberty is its highest aim. This 
sphere of the Notion, Hegel has elaborated in his Redds- 
philosophic (Philosophy of Law, 1821). The stand-point 
which he occupies here is quite the ancient one. As the 
man of classical antiquity knew nothing higher than to 
be a beautiful representation of the common life of his 
native land, so Hegel's man is lost in the objective mind 
which spreads itself in the states of the earth, and is 
evolved in the history of the world. In the human race's 
consciousness of God, the Notion goes back into itself 
(absolute mind). Its consciousness of God, mankind ex- 
presses in art, religion, philosophy. In art, the idea is 



200 THE RENOVATION. 

expressed in physical materials. Their consciousness of 
God has, by the nations, been cut in stone., represented in 
colours, breathed forth in music, uttered in poetical 
words : but the physical materials are not the correspond- 
ing form of existence for the idea. In religion, we haye 
the idea in the form of conception and feeling. The abso- 
lute religion, of which all the others are only prepare 
stages, is Christianity. In the God-man. that was mani- 
fested, which is the substance of all religion, viz.. the 
unity of man with God. That which in the God-man 
represented itself in absolute originality, is. in the Spirit. 
to become the common property of mankind. It is true, 
even religion is not } r et the pure form of the idea. If 
God be the Notion, then the corresponding form in which 
we conceive of Him can be notional thinking only — i. e.. 
philosophy. Mankind's knowing of God is God's know- 
ing of himself : in the mind of mankind God evolves him- 
self. This process of the development of mankind. Hegel 
has drawn in bold, grand outlines. 

This course of philosophy, since Fichte, had a powerful 
influence upon the development of the general, as wel 
of religious life. The Ego which, ever since the eighteenth 
century, had absorbed all powers of life, returned, in 
Schelling, into nature; in Hegel, into the moral and reli- 
gious life, with the conviction of finding there eternal 
truth. These philosophical systems produced a reconcil- 
ing and restoring character. As regards, more especially, 
the religious life, the pantheistic spirit represented by 
Schelling and Hegel produced a beneficial reaction against 
the insipid Theism of the eighteenth century, although, in 
itself, it was a grave aberration from truth. These 
philosophers called forth the conviction, that that Supreme 
Being, whom Uluminism had placed beyond the stars, 
as a dead abstraction, was the essence, truth, power. 



ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 201 

and life of the world. The bold attempts to compre- 
hend, from a single principle, heaven and earth, again 
impressed it upon the conviction, that if men wished 
to know the truth, they must know everything in God ; 
and doctrines of Christianity, which were looked upon as 
being long ago set aside, such as the Trinity, the union of 
the divine and human natures, etc., displayed depths into 
which they looked with amazement. This speculative 
school became, of course, a stone of offence to the dis- 
ciples of Illuminism. The philosophers of llluminism 
could not conceal from themselves that these philoso- 
phers, too, possessed reason, and undoubtedly greater 
skill and depth in philosophy than they themselves did. 
And now to behold these results opposed to everything 
which, according to the common intellectual sense, could 
exist ! In boldness of investigation, in acuteness of thought, 
in moral energy, in power of language, in everything, in 
short, which they admired, Ficlite was far superior to the 
men of Hlumuiis?n, and yet he walked in paths of thought 
absolutely inaccessible. Him, too, Nicolai at length ven- 
tured to assail, but only to find his literary death. 
Fichte' s pamphlet (edited by A. W. Schlegel) : " Frederick 
Nicolai's Life and Strange Opinions," is one of the most 
crushing controversial treatises which was ever written. 

The second school, which proceeded from Fichte. is 
commonly designated by the name of the " Romantic.'' 
The Ego of Fichte was not the individual, but that which 
is common to all individuals — the universal personality. 
But life is not so logical as science. A circle of distin- 
guished literati, who, with the critical severity of Lessing, 
renewed Lessing's demand for genius, covered themselves 
with the cloak of this philosophy. The mystery of life, 
they said, lies in a God-given original life, in an instinc- 
tively working genius of the Ego. By Schelling this is 



202 THE RENOVATION. 

called u intellectual intuition," by Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis, 
" poetry," by Schleiermacher, Ci sense and taste for the in- 
finite." To follow this divine impulse of life is the high- 
est object and duty. This circle knew that, with such a 
view of life, they were in decided opposition to the world of 
Illaminism, which, in moral life, followed ethics, — in their 
vocation, utilitarianism, — in social life, education, — in phi- 
losophy and religion, common sense. The bold youth com- 
prehended this world, governed by such aims, under the 
name of Philisterwelt (world of Philistines), and never 
wearied in holding them up to ridicule. This irony was 
a power, because it appeared combined with eminent 
sagacity and humour. That which is most splendid in 
Tieck's productions of that period is the humour which 
he has poured out upon the whole literature of common 
sense. The critical skill of the two Schlegels becomes 
terrorism in the " Athenaeum " The ironical feature which 
pervades ScMeiermachers character comes most promi- 
nently out, when, with superior understanding, he compels 
common sense to confess its nothingness. But, hand 
in hand with this negative element, there was a positive 
one also. They who thought this to be the mystery of 
life, to follow, without reflecting, the poetical genius, 
looked with deep longings into a time when poetry still 
ruled the nations — the time of the middle ages. Novalis 
celebrated the middle ages in his Ofterdingen. Tiech 
revived the world of tales, the popular traditions, the 
minnesong, the ancient German art. Although they saw 
a very scanty remainder of mediaeval glory in the modern 
Roman Catholicism, yet they found in it more pasture 
than in cleared out Protestantism. Fred. Schlegel and 
Zach. Werner went over to Roman Catholicism, and 
Gorres, at a later period, placed his Romanticism entirely 
at the service of Rome. Creations of true art, however, 



ROMAXTIC SCHOOL. 203 

have not been produced by this Romantic school, not 
even by TiecJc ; and however strangely it may sound, the 
reason is, that it had too much of that which it fought 
against, and too little of that which it aimed at. There 
was too much reflecting understanding, and too little 
original genius in these Romantics. All of them were 
stronger in criticising than in creating, more powerful in 
their aims than in their poetry. Even Tieck never de- 
nied his philosophizing native place, Berlin. As their pre- 
dilection for the middle ages was only a poetical dilettan- 
teism, so the authority also for which many a disciple of 
this school was longing was rather a palliative for the 
unbridled caprice of his doings, than a truly moral bent. 
Werner continued, after he had turned a priest, to have, 
in the pulpit, his sport with the most sacred things, just 
as formerly he had sported with Protestantism. He, in 
the Vienna Conference, performed the parts of Abraham 
a Santa Clara. " The Romantics," says one of them, 
" wished, indeed, the positive, not from an orthodox zeal, 
but for the sake of the mysterious and miraculous, for 
the sake of the beautiful halo which surrounds the posi- 
tive ; they fought for a faith which, in reality, they them- 
selves had not. Hence their uncertain conduct, this arti- 
ficial, eccentric, forced Roman Catholicism." 1 This 
school, however, also fulfilled its mission. The crushing 
irony with which they assailed Illuminism has had a ven- 
tilating and purifying influence. Romanticism has 
awakened a historical sense, the farther development of 
which we shall see at a subsequent period. But it has 
especially contributed to produce the conviction that 
moral life is its own aim, not a mere appendage to 



1 Eichendorff on the Moral and Religious Importance of the 
Modern Romantic Poetry in Germany. S. 31. 



204 THE RENOVATION. 

ethics ; and it has been the merit of Schleiermacher 
especially to vindicate this. 

In 1799, appeared Schleiermacher 's u Reden iiber Reli- 
gion an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verachtern" (Discourses 
on Religion, addressed to the educated among its despisers). 
It was the same year in which Fichte was accused of athe- 
ism, and obliged to leave Jena. This affair with Fichte is 
an historical commentary on these discourses. Fichte was 
quite the man of his system ; the man of the Ego, which 
submits to itself the non-Ego, was of the boldest energy. 
According to a family tradition, he was the descendant 
of a Swedish soldier who, during the Thirty Years' War, 
had remained in Lusatia. 1 "Whether that be the case or 
not, he was a man possessed of the reflection and boldness 
of a Northlander. In the same powerful manner in 
which, in his chair, he dealt with his students, and, in his 
writings, with the public, whom he would compel to under- 
stand, he broke, in life also, through everything which he 
imagined to be a barrier. In his system there was no 
room for the supra-mundane God of Kant ; all religion 
became faith in the moral order of the world. This he 
gave forth, with regardless candour, in an essay " On the 
grounds of our belief in a moral order of the world." In 
consequence of the agitation called forth by this essay, 
the government of Electoral Saxony called upon that of 
Weimar to interfere against excesses directed against 
even natural religion. Charles Augustus of Weimar, who 
shortly before had taken Dr Paulus under his protection, 
thought only of satisfying the government of Electoral 
Saxony by a certain appearance. Schiller gave, in the 
name of the Duke, the most satisfactory declarations to 
Fichte ; Gothe judged on the whole affair like an Epicu- 
rean: on God and divine things people should observe 
l Fichte, the younger: Joiiann Gottlieb Fichte. I. 



SCHLEIEEAIACHER. 205 

the deepest silence. And what could Herder say, with 
his Spinozistie views of God ? The most distinguished 
theologians were anxious to assure Fichte of their sym- 
pathy. Fichte would have easily got off, if, confiding in 
his right, he had not asked an honourable victory. In 
the whole business, the atheist appears as the most moral 
man. The government of Weimar got out of the scrape 
by accepting the resignation which, in a private letter, 
Fichte had offered. Fichte went to Berlin, where his 
democratic tendencies, at first, caused some hesitation ; 
but when the people became convinced that he was not a 
Jacobin, they neither remembered nor meddled with his 
controversy with God. Frederick William said : " If 
Fichte be a quiet citizen, a residence in my realm may 
be readily granted to him. If it be true that he is en- 
gaged in a controversy with our blessed God, the Lord 
himself may settle that with him ; I don't mind it." It 
was in such a time, when not Christianity merely, but 
general religion and piety had thus fallen into decay, that 
Schleiennacher came out with his Discourses on religion : 
<; I know," he says, •'•' that you worship the Deity in holy 
retirement as little as you attend the deserted temples ; 
and that in your adorned dwellings, no other sacred things 
are to be found than the wise sayings of our wise men, 
and the glorious fictions and creations of our artists ; and 
that humanism and sociality, art and science, have so 
completely taken possession of your hearts and minds, 
that no room is left for the eternal and holy Being whom 
you place altogether beyond the world." He told them 
that he did not come to them as a clergyman, in order to 
plead for the doctrine and faith of the Church : w I have 
nothing to do with these old orthodox and barbarous 
lamentations whereby they would again cry up the fallen 
walls of their Jewish Zion, and its Gothic pillars." He 



206 THE RENOVATION. 

came to them as their equal, and he would fight with no 
other weapon than their own. You have begun to 
doubt of religion, because you do not find a proper place 
for it, either in the territory of knowledge, or in that of 
will. You are right ; but you are mistaken in imagining 
that you thereby strike at religion. Religion is neither 
knowledge, nor willing, but feeling. The moment of 
original life, out of which all the powers and faculties of 
the soul spring, is that when, unconsciously and immedi- 
ately, man, the incarnate reason, is united with, and 
absorbed in the universe. This moment, which lies be- 
yond all consciousness is required. " If I, at least, may 
advance a simile, and compare it, since I cannot describe 
it, I would say that it is fleeting and perspicuous, like 
that fragrance which the moisture of the dew calls forth 
from blossoms and fruits, sacred and fruitful like a bridal 
embrace/' As soon as consciousness and reflection begin, 
man separates what that moment unites, viz., the Ego 
and the universe. To know, is to place the universe into 
the Ego; to will, the Ego into the universe. In the 
realm of knowledge, which is divided into that of physics 
and ethics, there remains as little a place for religion as 
in the realm of action, which is either moral or artistic. 
Religion is in the feeling which refers all the phenomena 
in the universe to the whole, to the Infinite, to the Spirit of 
the universe. It is first in religion that that original unity 
of man with the universe is restored, although only within 
consciousness ; it is first in religion that knowing and act- 
ing find their connecting link. Inasmuch as all life 
stands in an internal connection, the religious life will 
also communicate itself to knowing and acting ; but in 
neither sphere does it appear in its purity, but as in an 
ore, and mixed with dross ; doctrines of faith are, so to 
speak, cooled lava. This feeling does not rise immediately 



SCHLEIER3IACHER. 207 

to the infinite, but always through the medium of the phe- 
nomena of the universe. This feeling perceives, in all the 
forms of nature, phenomena of the life of the universe 
working according to laws ; and in all forms of humanity 
it perceives revelations of the one indivisible humanity. 
Religious feeling seeks to communicate itself. There are 
virtuosos of religion around whom those are gathering 
whose religious life falls in harmoniously with the sounds 
which are raised by the former. Thus there arise circles 
of religious communities. One must not, indeed, in 
speaking of them, think of our ecclesiastical communities, 
which can scarcely be viewed as preparatory schools of 
these. " I have represented to you a society of men whose 
piety has become conscious to them, and in whom the 
religious view of life has become predominant above all 
others ; and as I think I have convinced you that these 
must be men of some education and much energy, and 
that there can be only a few of them, you must not seek 
their union where many hundreds are assembled in large 
temples, and their singing strikes your ear even at a dis- 
tance. You know that men of this kind do not stand so 
near each other." Religious life, although one as to its 
essence, viz., sense and taste for the infinite, expresses 
itself in various religions, because there are many modes 
of viewing the universe ; variety in religion is a necessary 
thing. It is altogether wrong to say : This religion is 
true, and that is false ; it is only when religion is viewed 
as knowledge that we arrive at the notion of true and 
false. " Everything which is immediate in religion is 
true, for in what other manner could it have arisen? 
But immediate is only that which has not yet gone 
through the notion, but has grown up purely in the feel- 
ing. Even everything which anywhere takes a religious 
form is good, for it does so only because it expresses com- 



208 THE RENOVATION. 

mon higher life. Modern Rome, ungodly, but consistent, 
fulminates excomunications, and casts out heretics. An- 
cient Rome, truly pious and religious in a higher style, 
was hospitable to every god. and for this reason it was 
full of gods." Christianity does not claim to be the only 
true religion. 4i Although there will always be Chris- 
tians, shall Christianity be, for this reason, unlimited in 
its general diffusion, and alone prevalent among mankind 
as the only religion? It scorns this exclusive dominion, 
which would degrade it : it sufficiently honours each of 
its elements to look upon it with delight as a centre of a 
peculiar whole ; it not only wishes to produce infinite 
variety out of itself, but would like to look, out of its 
sphere, on all that variety which it cannot produce out of 
itself. It never forgets that it has the best proof of its 
eternity in its tendency to degenerate, and in its own 
history, often so sad : and it always waits for a redemp- 
tion from the imperfection by which it is pressed down. 
It is just for this reason that it would like to see, away 
from this corruption, proceeding other forms of religion, 
younger, and, if possible, stronger and more beautiful, 
close by itself, from all points, and even from those regions 
which appear to it as the extreme and doubtful limits of 
religion in general. The religion of religions cannot 
gather materials enough for its pure tendency towards all 
that is human ; and just as nothing is more irreligious 
than to demand uniformity in mankind in general, so 
nothing is more unchristian than to seek uniformity in 
religion." 

Neander 1 bears witness to the impression which these 
discourses produced upon their time. " Those who at that 
time belonged to the rising generation, will remember 

1 Das verflossene halbe Jahrhundert (the bygone half- century) 
in Abhandlungeriy S. 224. 



SCHLEIEIDIACHEE. 209 

with what power this book influenced the minds of the 
young, being written in all the vigour of youthful enthu- 
siasm, and bearing witness to the neglected, undeniable 
religious element in human nature. That which constitutes 
the peculiar characteristic of religion, viz., that it is an inde- 
pendent element in human nature, had fallen into oblivion 
by a one-sided rational or speculative tendency, or a one- 
sided tendency to absorb it in ethics. Schleiermacher 
had touched a note which, especially in the minds of 
youth, could not but continue to sound everywhere. Men 
were led back into the depth of their heart, to perceive here 
a divine drawing which, when once called forth, might lead 
them beyond that which the author of this impulse had 
expressed with distinct consciousness." In these words, 
there is a simple expression of what that is which consti- 
tutes the power and eternal truth of these discourses. 
The eighteenth century wished to reduce all relations to 
their natural foundation ; but that which they considered to 
be the natural foundation was, when more closely examined, 
nothing but abstractions of the intellect. They considered 
the conviction of the reality of the ideas of God, duty, and 
immortality, as the natural foundation of all religions. 
The futility of this proceeding is incontrovertibly proven 
by Schleiermacher. Religion, whatever may be the mat- 
ter of conviction, is a fact of immediate life in man. He 
who would understand the nature of religion, must point 
out this root of life. This even Lessing had declared ; this 
had been maintained by Jacobi also, of whom ScMeier- 
macher says, that he owed to him more than he himself 
was aware of. Schleiermacher, the son of a pious mother, 
brought up in the schools of the Moravian Brethren at 
Niesky and Barby, could call religion the motherly breast 
by which his young life had been nourished. But, beside 
this religious disposition, a tendency to reflection very 

o 



210 THE RENOVATION. 

earl j manifested itself, which made the boy doubt the 
truth of all history, and of the doctrines of faith handed 
down : and, the youth having been nourished by classi- 
cal and philosophical studies, speedily became estranged 
from the sphere of Moravianism. 1 But that which SdJeier- 
macher ever retained from this education, was a religious 
fervour, which, according to the manner of the Moravians, 
concentrated itself in the heart. The study of Plato, 
which engaged him when still in Xiesky, and which after- 
wards produced as its fruit his masterly translation of the 
dialogues of Plato, seems, in the first instance, to have 
influenced his style only, and his dialectic disposition, and 
hence to have exercised an influence which was only for- 
mal. On the other hand, his Discourses on religion, point 
to another philosophy. All religion is to be in feeling, 
—that feeling, which views all finite phenomena as 
the manifestations of the life of the universe. :; The 
contemplation of the pious is only an immediate con- 
sciousness that all finite is altogether in and through the 
Infinite, — all temporal in and through the Eternal It is 
this which we seek and find in all which lives and moves, — * 
in all growth and change,— in all doing and suffering ; and 
to know life itself in this light, is religion " There is. 
no doubt, although Sclileiermacher at a subsequent period 
has confounded the judgment by his sophistical interpre- 
tation, that this feeling corresponds with the stand-point 
of that philosopher, of whom it is recorded that he said : 
" Offer reverently with me a lock to the manes of holy 
rejected Spinoza ! He was inspired by the high Spirit of 
the universe ; the Infinite was his beginning and end. — ■ 
the universe his only eternal love. In holy innocence 
and deep humility he beheld, as in a glass, his image in 

1 See the autobiographical fragment, communicated by Lorn- 
matzsch in Niedner's Zeitschrifl, H. I., S. 435. 



SCHLEIERMACHEE. 211 

the eternal world, and was anxious that its image too 
should be reflected by him in the most lovely manner. He 
was full of religion and of the Holy Spirit ; he therefore 
still stands out alone and unapproached, master in his art, 
but elevated above the profane craft, without disciples, 
and without citizenship." If God be viewed as the sub- 
stance of the universe, which has existence in the single 
phenomena of nature and mind only, then all religion can, 
of course, consist only in acknowledging the universe in 
the single phenomena. For this very reason, feeling is 
not allowed to rise immediately to the Infinite, because 
this Infinite has existence in the finite only. The pas- 
sages which we have quoted shew what a low position 
Schleiermacher, from the stand-point of this pantheistic 
religion, assigned to Christianity. It is a religion, beside 
others which have an equally good title, and has yet to 
expect more perfect forms of its essence. " The original 
view of Christianity is none else than that of the univer- 
sal striving of all which is finite towards the unity of the 
whole, and of the manner in which the Deity treats this 
striving, and in which it reconciles the enmity against 
itself, and puts limits to the increasing alienation, by 
single points scattered over the whole, which, at the 
same time, are finite and infinite, divine and human/' 
The simple meaning of this strangely worded speech is 
this : The centre of Christianity is the reconciliation of 
sinful mankind with God by the God-man. If all religion 
consists in the union of the finite with the Infinite, then sin 
appears as " resistance of the finite to the unity of the 
whole." But altogether unintelligible are " the points 
scattered over the whole, which are divine and human." 
It seems almost as if Christianity were teaching several 
God-men and Redeemers, At all events, it appears how 
very far Schleiermacher still was from Christianity. 



212 THE RENOVATION. 

As in five discourses, SchUiermacher represented bis 
religious stand-point, so almost contemporaneously (1800). 
in five monologues, his moral stand-point. That which 
constitutes the nature of man, is not his outward actions, 
nor his outward fate, but his free personality. That 
which the prevailing opinion calls moral law or conscience, 
is nothing else than our universal Ego. But it is abso- 
lutely wrong to attempt to reduce all men to the Ego of 
mankind. Moral excellence rather consists in represent- 
ing humanity in an individual manner. In the face of 
mankind, every man should cultivate his individuality. 
but in such a way as to preserve sympathy and love for 
other individualities, and hence to remain in union with 
mankind. " Now, it has become clear to me, that every 
man is in his own way to represent mankind, in a peculiar 
mixture of its elements, in order that it may manifest 
itself in every way, and, in the fulness of time and space, 
really become all which, by any possibility, it can, — and that 
all that variety may come forth from its womb, which in 
any way it may contain." SchUiermacher knows that, 
with these moral views, he stands as isolated in his time, 
as he does with his views on religion ; but a better time 
is coming. " Thus, in my mode of thinking, as well as 
in my life, I am a stranger to the present generation, — a 
prophetic citizen of a later world to which I am drawn 
by a lively imagination and strong faith, and every deed 
and every action belongs to it." But whatever may 
come to pass, he who has found his innermost being fears 
nothing. " To become more and more that which I am, 
is my only wish." -In the last monologues, the Ego con- 
fesses that it is a world which is sufficient for itself. 
whatever the outer world may bring. It knows itself to 
be old in youth, and vows to itself eternal youth in old 
age. '• To the consciousness of inner freedom, and acting 



SCHLEIERMACHER. 213 

in accordance with it, corresponds eternal youth and joy. 
This I have got hold of, and shall never give it up again ; 
and, with a smile, I thus see vanishing the light of mine 
eyes, and white hairs springing up among my fair locks. 
Whatever may happen, nothing shall grieve my heart ; 
the pulse of my inner life shall remain fresh until I 
die/' 

In these monologues, the stand-point is vindicated, which, 
as we have already seen, proceeded from that of Fichte — 
the stand-point of the individuality — which in deed has given 
up the bold unbounded aims of Fichte 's Ego, but yet not its 
idealistic self-possession. This moral view of the world, 
according to which mankind is represented in the indivi- 
dual, has something classical in it. The individual does not 
seek truth beyond the stars, nor after this life, but it is, 
and he has it, in his individuality, which he shape sinto a 
moral work of art. And with this classical stand-point, 
no doubt the classical calmness of Schleiermacher 's style 
is connected. The language in which a beautiful moral 
personality represents itself, must itself be artistically 
formed, and the spinning out of the individual life mani- 
fests itself in the structure of the periods calmly spun out. 
But it is only a classical tendency which this stand-point 
has. In the ancient world, the moral common life of the 
State was the substance of the individual ; here, all the 
moral powers of life are only enlargements of the indi- 
viduality. It is in this going out from the individuality, — 
in this idealism of disposition, — in this general self-enjoy- 
ment, — in this youthful courage, — which, in the discourses 
on religion, assumes to be the mediator of religious life, 
and, in the monologues, the seer giving forth oracles, — in 
this feature of irony which takes the weapons of dialectics ; 
— it is in this that the romantic elements in Schleiermacher 
consist. Schleiermacher, who, at the time when the Dis- 



214 THE RENOVATION. 

courses and Monologues appeared, was a minister in Berlin, 
had at that time much intercourse with Frederick Schlegel. 
A monument of this intercourse are the " Letters on 
Lucinde," which cast a shade on Schleiermacher that no 
apology can remove. In these letters, the wife of the 
minister Grunow, has a share. With her Schleiermacher 
stood in a relation which, likewise, cannot be justified by 
any defence. She was just about to be divorced, and he 
was on the point of marrying her, when her conscience 
awoke. He belonged to the circle of Prince Louis, in 
which intellect and art, but not morality, reigned. A 
clergyman, who was a pious and honourable man, although 
his theology was adulterated with Illuminism, Court- 
chaplain Sack, at that time reproved him, with paternal 
gravity, for his intercourse, his haughty irony, his un- 
natural style, his Spinozistic views, his position, unfitting 
him for the ministerial office. Schleiermacher answered 
in the clever and evasive manner, which, in his notes to 
the Discourses on Religion, has erected to itself so sad a 
monument. 1 

To the theistic intellectual naturalism, Schleiermacher 
had, in the Discourses, opposed a pantheistic naturalism 
of life. However, he came nearer to positive Christianity. 
In the Weihnachtsfeier (Christmas celebration, 1806), 
Christ appears as the heavenly eentre of all religion. 
This dialogue is an imitation of Plato's Symposion ; as 
the latter is a kind of apotheosis of Socrates, so the former 
is a glorification of Christ. It is divided into three parts. 
In the first, a child appears in the foreground, with its 

1 On Schleiermacher's relation to Schlegel, see Varnhagen von 
Ense, Denkivurdigkeiten, IV. S. 367, ff; on that to Madame 
Grunow ; Gass, Schleiermacher' s Briefwechsel mit Gass, P. xxxi. 
xxxvi. ; on that to Prince Louis : Filrsi, Henriette Herz, S. III. 
ff ; Sack's Letter : Studien u. Kritiken, 1850, H. 2, S. 143. 



SCHLEIERMACHEK, 215 

child-like joy in Christ, representing itself in pictures and 
music. In the second part, women of different disposi- 
tions exhibit their inner life in Christ. In the third, the 
critico-rationalistic, the reflecting, and the speculative 
views of Christ are set forth by men. This dialogue re- 
sembles the work of a watch, in which every pin is cal- 
culated. It is in this intentionality, no doubt, that the 
fundamental error of the whole lies. The representation 
of the pious child is a total failure, and the enthusiastic 
Joseph, an abortive Alcibiades. In general, the artistic 
form of these works does not appear to be successful ; the 
individual is too dialectic, the dialectic too individual. 
The language of ScJileiermacher is wanting in the sim- 
plicity of truth, the instinct of genius; there is too 
much which is artificial, studied, and intentional in his 
style. 1 

To the two streams which had sprung forth from his 
own height, Fichte himself opened up a course into life. 
The distress of his fatherland was a powerful call upon his 
energy. In his " Discourses to the German Nation," he 
held up to the fallen people a mirror of its past history, 
and of its present spiritual debasement, and found the 
way for a better future, chiefly in a better education, as 



1 Sack, 1. c. says : — Revolting to me is the revolutionary new 
language, which, in defiance of the first rule of all rational 
speaking and teaching" — intelligibility — always pays in false coin, 
wraps itself up in mysterious darkness, and, from a fear of ex- 
pressing itself in a vulgar manner, becomes bombastic ; just 
like a man, who, in order to appear taller than others, goes 
upon stilts. At least, a man so well acquainted as you are with 
the noble simplicity of the Greeks, should despise this pompous 
and tasteless style, and leave it to the enthusiasts and poetical 
witlings, who are contented with the admiration of sentimental 
would-be learned women. The cutting dogmatizing also is, in 
matters of this kind, certainly as little a necessary requirement 
as a recommendation of a true philosophy. 



216 THE RENOVATION. 

the master of which he set up Pestalozzi. The philan- 
thropists and humanists had aimed at producing culti- 
vated men ; Pestalozzi s education aimed at the moral 
and spiritual salvation of the neglected people. By a 
commission from the Swiss government, he went (179S) 
to Stanz, to the poor children who were altogether 
perishing in consequence of the French wars ; and there 
his warm love for the people, his paternal, educational 
wisdom, found a sphere of truly heroic activity. The 
secret of his success lay in the circumstance, that he 
brought into the educational establishment the family- 
spirit, whose influence he had himself experienced. He 
planted the school in the soil of the family. It is for 
this reason that he liked so much to put his educational 
wisdom into the mouths of mothers. In the work, " Wie 
Gertrud Hire Kinder lehrt" (how Gertrude teaches her 
children), the fundamental thoughts of his method are 
expressed " Man ! imitate the doing of sublime nature, 
which, from the germ of even the greatest tree, first brings 
forth an imperceptible germ, but then by shoots as imper- 
ceptible, as daily and hourly prepared, first displays the 
foundation of the stem, then that of the boughs, then that 
of the branches, up to the last twigs on which the perish- 
able leaves are hanging. The organism of human nature 
is, as to its substance, subject to the same laws. Accord- 
ing to these laws, all instruction consists, in every depart- 
ment of knowledge, in calling forth by love and wisdom, that 
which is nearest and first, which is originally indwelling in 
the human mind ; then gradually, but with uninterrupted 
strength, to derive even higher and nobler results from that 
which is primary and original, and to keep all its parts and 
results, up to the highest and most perfect, in a living and 
harmonious connection." Pestalozzi's thought was thus 
an organic education following the natural development. 



PESTALOZZI. 217 

Like the Philanthropists, he proceeded from a belief in the 
natural goodness of human nature, and was indeed only 
anxious to bring to light the treasure of the good powers 
of nature ; but what he wished to elaborate was not, as 
in the case of the Philanthropists, the disposition of man 
for civil society, nor, as in the case of the Humanists, the 
abstract human, but the inner life. " The true teacher 
of this method, full of humility, feeling the weakness and 
imperfection of his own personality, does not venture 
violently to interfere with the pupil's course of develop- 
ment. To behold the faculties, the individuality in the 
child, its peculiar independent life, and to recognize how 
the human appears in infinite forms, and how, neverthe- 
less, the one humanity appears in all of them ; how every 
one is a mirror of the whole, and reveals, more or less 
visibly, with greater or less glory, the one unchangeable 
thing : — to recognise this is the delight of the educationist, 
who has understood his task and his relation to humanity ; 
it is his weapon, his strength, his reward, the inexhaust- 
ible source of his love, and the inspiring spring of his 
activity." So Schleiermacher might have spoken, and 
indeed Pestalozzi's education stands almost in the same 
relation to that of the Philanthropists and Humanists, as 
Schleiermacher 's naturalism, to that of Theism. This 
man's inexhaustible love, child-like humility, and increas- 
ing efforts, have certainly been influenced by the Spirit of 
Jesus Christ ; only, the gospel was not the central and 
culminating point of his educational system, by which, 
however, many a noble soul has been led to the Lord. 
Pestalozzi's method, held up as a model by Fichte in 
these discourses, was, especially in Prussia, employed by 
government, as well as by single eminent pupils of his. 1 

1 In what I have said about Pestalozzi, I have chiefly followed 
Blockmanris book, " Heinrich Pestalozzi" (Dresden, 1846), 



218 THE RENOVATION. 

Fichte's thoughts, also, about a better physical education; 
were carried out by his disciple JaJin, the head-master 
of gymnastics (Turnen). It was, generally speaking, the 
Prussian State in which the regeneration of Germany was 
prepared. The soul of the political re-organization was 
Stein. The great point was to compensate, in a moral 
and intellectual way, for the loss of half of the kingdom, and 
to break from within that which added strength to the 
enemy. This State, carried to the brink of the abyss of 
destruction, by following its separate policy, now entered 
upon an historical and German path, leading away from 
the path of Illuminisni, — a path on which non- Prussians, 
with German hearts, such as the Saxon Fichte, the 
Rhenish baron of the Empire, Von Stem, the silently 
working Hanoverian Scharnhorst, were its guides. The 
guerillas of Spain, the rising of Tyrol, the immense sacri- 
ficial flames of Moscow, showed what a people could do 
w T hen it feels itself to be a people ; and the daring enter- 
prizes of Dorenberg, Schill, Brunsivick-Oels, showed that 
the spirit of chivalry had not yet died out in Germany. By 
his manifesto, the king at last placed himself at the head 
of the movement. Russia, prepared for war, stood in the 
back-ground ; Austria soon joined. It was not the great- 
ness of the princes, not even the strategical skill of the 
generals, but the morally renewed spirit of the people, 
which conquered Napoleon. To this prince of war, who 
had gone forth from the Revolution, was given power 
over the nations, as long as they themselves still carried 
the Revolution within themselves. The old German em- 
pire must fall, for it was long ago decayed : but the 
particular states of Germany, which had now become 

which, along with the characteristics by Raumer, in his history 
of Pedagogy, is the best which has been written on this 
point. 



MORAL REXOVATION. 219 

independent, could not receive any better consecration for 
the task, assigned to them, of representing, each in its par- 
ticular way, the old German empire, than this baptism of 
blood. The circumstance, however, that after this fear- 
ful judgment of God, the diplomatists were, as the well- 
known proverb says, dancing without moving from their 
places; and that, when they earnestly took up the matter, 
they gave to Talleyrand so much scope for his tricks, that 
the return of Napoleon was necessary to prevent a war 
among the allies ; — this circumstance is indeed a sad 
proof for the truth of the question of the prophet : 
"To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" Those 
liberation-wars have, in the hand of God, been the 
turning-point for the religious renovation, which Ger- 
man science, as we saw, had foreboded and prepared : — 
and science is, after all, the peculiar sphere of the 
Germans. 

A spirit of moral earnestness, an historical sense, a 
new religious life henceforth manifest themselves in 
Germany. 

We say, a spirit of moral earnestness. That which 
imparts stability to a Christian people, a patriotic and 
religious spirit, had altogether perished in the age of 
llluminism. The single individuals followed their senti- 
mental interests, their family happiness, their humanistic 
societies, their particular, strange virtues, their gesthetica! 
enjoyments. It was very wholesome for this generation, 
shut up in their subjectivity, that fate, of which in senti- 
mental phrases, they were declaiming, met them in a very 
serious manner, in that man, who was fond of viewing him- 
self as the servant of fate. The terrors of war showed 
to the people how unsafe is the world formed around the 
hearth, when throne and altar are shaken. This transla- 
tion from the play of subjective tendencies into the earnest 



220 THE RENOVATION. 

surrender to the moral, fundamental powers of life, is, in 
a very impressive, lively, and conspicuous manner, brought 
before our eyes by the life-pictures of Arndi, Stiffens, 
Stein, Perthes, and others. The Tugendbund (union for 
virtue) found in the Fatherland the object of virtue. 
There breathes in the Romantics of the liberation-wars, 
after all, another moral spirit than in Tieck, Schlegel, etc. 
In Theodore Korner patriotic enthusiasm comes out, after 
a struggle with sentimentalism, in such strength as could 
not fail powerfully to affect that period. Ruchert breathes 
into the soft forms of the sonnet the courage of bold youth. 
In the lays of Schenkendorf, a chivalrous personality, full 
of love, truth, and faith, is displayed. Uhland, in the 
spirit and power of the Minnesingers, sang songs pervaded 
by patriotic enthusiasm, and gentle presentiments of the 
glory of the Church. In the solitude of a forest, on a 
place where a ringing of bells out of the depth testifies of 
a lost Church, he beholds the mediaeval Church in the 
form of a minster, rising and disappearing in the skies. 
Justinus Kerner represents the spirit of melancholy, which 
has always been peculiar to the German people, but puri- 
fied into a longing for a future better world, which, by its 
world of spirits, is connected with this present world. The 
academical youth brought home from the battle fields a 
chivalrous courage, a patriotic sense, a moral consecra- 
tion ; but as life did not afford to them a corresponding 
reality, it wandered into fantastic endeavours, quixotic 
associations, and strange demonstrations. 1 Whatever 
of the eccentric or wrong was done, they were Mara- 
thonic times — times like those after the Persian wars in 
Greece. 

We said that a historical sense had been evolved since 

1 Raumer, The German Universities, S. 96, H. 



HISTORICAL RENOVATION. 221 

the liberation- wars. From the spirit of Illuminism, which 
Avaged war with all that had been handed down, Austria 
and Prussia had reaped destruction ; but by going back to 
the moral spirit of the fathers, they had conquered. 
Everywhere a sense for the past times of Germany mani- 
fested itself. With a wonderful enthusiasm, the three 
hundredth anniversary of the Reformation was celebrated, 
in 1817. It is true, that it was rather the German man, 
than the man of justification by faith, who was celebrated ; 
but in the liberation-wars, they had got a deeper under- 
standing of that leader in the spiritual liberation-war. 
Notwithstanding all this want of clearness, a fresh breeze 
blows in the Reformations - Almanack, to which the 
greatest theologians gave contributions. Marlieineke' 's 
History of the Reformation, and Spieker's Life of Luther 
(which, it is to be regretted, remained unfinished), are 
pervaded by a truly patriotic and earnestly historical 
spirit. And what a literature on the History of the 
Reformation has grown up since that time ! Romanticism 
had already opened up the way for an understanding of 
the middle ages. At the instigation of Stein, the great 
collection of monuments of the history of Germany 
(Monumenta Germaniae) arose. Following in the path 
of the brothers Grimm, the most distinguished men 
devoted themselves to the exploring of the German lan- 
guage, mythology, tales and traditions, customs, legal 
conditions, etc. The old German architecture, painting, 
and poetry became the subjects of the closest study. The 
history of Germany was treated in works comprehending 
the whole of it (one need only think of Luden), and in 
great monographs (one need only think of Raumer's 
Hohenstauferi). Even for hierarchy, mysticism, scholas- 
ticism, a lively historical interest was awakened. In 
jurisprudence, German law was most assiduously culti- 



222 THE KENOVATION. 

vated since the liberation-wars ; and the greatest men 
collected around Savigny, the representative of the histo- 
rical law school. This historical spirit entered even into 
spheres which stood in a traditional opposition to Roman- 
ticism — into philological studies, as is proved by two of 
their most important representatives, Passoio and Lack- 
mann. This historical tendency was, however, not limited 
to the domain of science only. Return to the old mo- 
narchical institutions, to the old ecclesiasticism, to the old 
feudal glory (Restoration), was the thought which ani- 
mated the Bourbons in France and Spain, And to these 
endeavours Haller lent his Restoration of Political Eco- 
nomy, Chateaubriand his Romanticism. In opposition to 
the demagogical movements which, in Germany, entered 
into a union with the patriotic historical sense, the policy 
of the Eastern powers too assumed more and more the 
character of Restoration (Verona). The revolution in 
July 1830, however, and its consequences, were able to 
break only a violent restoration of the old, not a healthy 
return to the spirit of the fathers. 

Lastly, a new religious life awoke in the princes as well 
as in the nations, since the liberation-wars. It is equally 
difficult to judge of the character of Emperor Francis of 
Austria as of that of his father, who, as is well known, 
when Grand-Duke of Tuscany, stood at the head of Illu- 
minism, but when Emperor, decidedly left the path of 
Emperor Joseph. Between the image of a popular 
simplicity which lives among the people, and that of a 
thoroughly calculating suspicious little soul, which others 
have given, a middle view seems to be the right one. * 
Frederick William, king of Prussia, walked at first in the 
steps of Frederick II. In a corrupted court, he preserved 

1 I think of such a view as Pertz has given in the Life of 
Stein. 



RELIGIOUS RENOVATION. 223 

simplicity, plainness, and humility. In his relation to 
Christianity, he did not deny Sack's school. But God 
took him into a school of severe trials. After the misfor- 
tunes of 1806, his heart was opened to a deeper know- 
ledge of salvation, especially by the assistance of the 
venerable Borowsky. Even before the liberation- wars, he 
seriously meditated the re-organization of the Church. 
And when the Lord had so wonderfully raised him from 
his deep humiliation, his life of faith too joyfully soared 
upwards. On the susceptible, chivalrous soul of Alex- 
ander of Russia, the earnestness of the times made a 
powerful impression. The idea of a Christian union of 
the nations awoke in his soul. Notwithstanding the dif- 
ferences of creed, the people of Europe should, like 
members of one family, give their hands to one another, 
in the faith of Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church, as 
the gospel proclaims Him to be. This grand idea was, to 
the English, too impractical, to the Pope, too unchristian. 
The Holy Alliance, it is true, remained only in the realm 
of thought ; but it is, at all events, a sign of the renewed 
religious life in the princes. In the people, the renewed 
life had, as yet, a very general character, or rather the 
general religiousness assumed a character more full of life. 
The youth did homage to the God, il Who great and 
wonderful, after a night of long disgrace, to us revealed 
himself in names; who broke with his lightenings the 
insolence of our enemies ; who graciously renewed our 
strength ; and dwells and reigns above the stars, from 
eternity to eternity." 

On the anniversary of the Reformation in 1817, Glaus 
Harms, archdeacon in Kiel, an original man from among 
the people, who, through Schleiermachers school, had 
returned to belief, thought himself called upon to add 
to the ninety-five Theses of Luther, ninety-five new ones, 



224 THE EEXOVATIOX. 

which set Luther's faith before the age rejoicing in Luther. 
The following are some of them : — III. With the idea 
of a progressing Reformation, in the manner in which 
this idea is at present understood, and especially in the 
manner in which we are reminded of it, Lutheranism 
will be reformed back into heathenism, and Christianity 
out of the world. IX. In matters of faith, Reason, and 
as regards the life, Conscience, may be called the Popes 
of our age. XI. Conscience cannot pardon sins. XXI. 
In the sixteenth century, the pardon of sins cost money 
after all ; in the nineteenth, it may be had without money, 
for people help themselves to it. XXIV. In an old 
hymn-book it was said, <; Two places, O man, thou hast 
before thee:" but in modern times they have slain the 
devil, and dammed up hell. XXXII. The so-called reli- 
gion of reason is destitute either of reason or religion, or 
both. XL VII. If, in matters of religion, reason claims 
to be more than a layman, it becomes a heretic; that 
avoid. Tit. iii. 10. LXIV. Christians should be taught 
that they have the right not to tolerate any un-Christian 
and un-Lutheran doctrine, in the pulpits, hymn-books, 
and school-books. LXVII. It is a strange claim that it 
must be permitted to teach a new faith from a chair 
which the old faith had set up, and from a mouth to 
which the old faith gives food. LXXI. Reason turned 
mad goes about in the Lutheran Church: it tears Chris- 
tianity from the altar, casts God's words out of the pulpit, 
throws dirt into the baptismal water, receives all kinds of 
people as godfathers, hisses the priests; and all the 
people follow its example, and have done so for a long 
time. And yet it is not bound. On the contrary, this is 
thought to be the genuine doctrine of Luther, and not of 
Carlstadt. LXXIV. The assertion that we are more 
advanced and enlightened can surely not be proved by 



harms' theses. 225 

the present ignorance as regards true Christianity. Many 
thousands can declare, as did once the disciples of John 
(Acts xix. 2), ' We have not so much as heard whether 
there be any Holy Ghost/ LXXV. Like a poor maid, 
they would now enrich the Lutheran Church by a mar- 
riage. Do not perform it over Luther's bones ! He 
will thereby be recalled to life, and then — woe to you. 
LXXVII. To say that time has taken away the wall of 
separation between Lutherans and Reformed, is not a 
clear speech. LXXXII. Just as reason has prevented the 
Reformed from finishing their Church, and reducing it to 
unity, so the reception of reason into the Lutheran Church 
would cause nothing but confusion and destruction. 
XCII. The Evangelical Catholic Church is a glorious 
Church ; she holds and forms herself pre-eminently by 
the Sacrament. XCIII. The Evangelical Reformed 
Church is a glorious Church ; she holds and forms her- 
self pre-eminently by the Word of God. XCIY. More 
glorious than either is the Evangelical Lutheran Church ; 
she holds and forms herself both by the Sacrament and 
the Word of God." 

These Theses gave rise to a powerful agitation. There 
appeared upwards of 200 controversial writings, chiefly 
directed against Harms. It was evident that the food 
was still too strong for the time ; but, on the other hand, 
this movement showed also that religious interests had 
again become a power. It was in vain that the old 
Humanism in Halle sang, — " Strew roses on the way. and 
forget Harms."" 1 Harms" testimony did not return void. 

1 A play upon the word Harm, which cannot be translated. 
Harm, as an appellative, means "sorrow, grief, sadness," and 
the genitive of it, which is required by the construction {Harms), 
differs very slightly only in the orthography from the genitive 
of the proper name (Harms'). They are words from a popular 

P 



226 THE RENOVATION. 

From a quarter altogether unexpected, there appeared a 
fellow-combatant. Atnmon defended Harms Theses in 
the pamphlet. "Fine bittere Arzt G-Jaubem- 

sehwache der Zeit " (a bitter medicine for the weak belief 
of our time). 

He even joined the protest against the Union. He 
says (S. 27) : u Neither Harms nor the writer of these 
pages has ever protested against a Christian union of the 
two Churches, but only against the mixing up and con- 
founding of the two. and especially a blending of the 
Lutheran Church, which threatens to change and dissolve 
its innermost nature." But to this earnest and distinct 
protest both were not only entitled, but even bound, as 
teachers of their Church, especially at the jubilee of the 
Reformation, where Luther should not be betrayed and 
given up, but honoured and defended. 

This protest against the Union called Schleierm: . 
into the lists. Schieiermacher was originally Reformed. 
and the festival oration which he delivered in the Univer- 
sity Hall of Berlin, on the Reformation festival of 181 7, 
begins with the words : •'• Spero 

qui miretur, quod in his saecularibus coy \s ego 

potissimUin dvco.ru qui Z>.cirtg~!ii magis quara L 
doctrinal mm addictus" (Werke, Th. V. S. 311). It is 
true that, in the position in which we first met him. his Re- 
formed character would say no more than the circumstance 
that Ammon,when he still walked in the ways of Kan\ 
a Lutheran, perhaps even less. Even at that time he had 
conceived the idea of an union between the Lutheran 
and Reformed Churches, as appears from " an opinion in 
reference to Protestant Church affairs," 1803 (1. c. S. 
46, ff.). The separation of the two churches is, according 

German scng, meaning, " Take it easy, and forget what troubles 
vou."— Tr. 



UNION IX PRUSSIA. 227 

to him, injurious ; first, because it induces common people 
to suppose that the trifles which separate the two Churches 
are really something essential, — because it brings discord 
into families, and makes the educated doubt the sincerity 
of ministers who separate themselves from the Reformed, 
while, among themselves, they differ on far more import- 
ant points. Secondly, because it is injurious to general 
morality and civilization, by producing intolerance, etc. 
Lastly, because it is also in opposition to the interests of 
the State, inasmuch as it brings confusion into educational 
affairs, allows the strength of the Reformed pastors, who 
generally have little to do, to lie unused, etc. One must, 
indeed, wonder to hear the romantic author here speaking 
on religion, in a manner in which Spalding, perhaps, 
would have spoken. Frederick William imagined that, 
after the liberation-wars, the time had come when reality 
raight be given to the idea of the Union which had been 
entertained by all his predecessors, ever since John Sigis- 
mu?id. No resistance was to be expected from a time 
which, although moved by religious interests, yet had be- 
come a stranger to the faith of their fathers. Thus, the 
Cabinet-order of the 27th September 1817 appeared, 
which addressed to the good sense and will of every single 
individual, the call that, in the conviction that the sepa- 
rated Churches were substantially one, they should unite 
into one evangelical Church, the outward form of which 
might be arranged and settled. The immediate conse- 
quence was, that, on the Reformation festival in Berlin, 
the ministers of the two confessions joined in the celebra- 
tion of the Lord's Supper as an expression of their Church 
communion. The " official declaration of the Berlin 
Synod" (written by Schleiermacher) closes with these 
words: "In this manner we, on our part offer, for the 
future also, to ail the Lutheran and Reformed congrega- 



228 THE RENOVATION. 

tions which are still separated, as long as there shall 
exist such in and out of our country, our brotherly hand 
for a Church communion undisturbed, and sufficient, as 
hitherto, for all existing circumstances. In proof that 
in this we do not offer or wish for anything new or 
unheard of, we refer to the example of the evangelical 
fraternity of the Moravians, which, too, is an union of 
Christians of both the Lutheran and Reformed confessions. 
and which celebrates the Lord's Supper according to a 
rite which is satisfactory to both the parties" (Werke, 
Th. V. S. 306). Against this attempt at a L^nion Harms 
and Amman protested, as we have seen. Schleiermacher. 
in a circular letter to Ammon, answered his examination 
of Harms' Theses (1818). Of Harms, Schleiermacher 
always spoke in a respectful manner, opposed his Theses 
more from a formal point of view, and always with the 
leniency of the teacher towards the former pupil ; but 
Ammon had to feel the acuteness of his dialectic intellect, 
and all the stings of his irony. The sum and substance 
of his arguments is this : "Amnion, such as he is known 
to the theological world, is in contradiction with himself if 
he rises up for Harms, and has no right to contend against 
the Union, inasmuch as he himself does not acknowledge 
the doctrine of the Church, to which he appeals." Ammon 
was in a difficult position. In his answer, which soon 
(1818) appeared, he endeavours to fill up the chasm be- 
tween his former stand-point, and that expressed in his 
66 Bittere Arznei" by pointing out that he had always 
been a rationalistic supernaturalist, — that he had. in his 
development, come more and more near to the doctrine 
of the Chinch, — and that it was conditionally only that he 
had defended Harms and opposed the Union. The tone 
in which Ammon defended a cause for which so much 
might be said, and especially against a man whose de- 



THE MEDIATING- THEOLOGY. 229 

velopment surely presents dark sides also, proves to even- 
one who understands the language of faith, that Amnion's 
return to the faith of the fathers was not so sincere. 

We have touched upon the Harms' controversy, because 
it is indeed a barometer of the time. A new life has 
awakened. This is proved by the enthusiastic celebra- 
tion of the Reformation jubilee, by Harms' Theses and 
Harms' opponents, by Amnion and Schleiermacher, by 
the promoters as well as the opponents of the Union. This 
new life, however, is by no means connected with the 
Chureh, or in harmony with the confession of the Church. 
This is proved by the isolated position of Harms. But it 
tends towards positive Christianity. This is proved 
especially by the importance which Schleiermacher's theo- 
logy has acquired since that time. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 



A man, whose testimony on historical points is willingly 
received, Xeander, in the preface to the second edition of 
his monograph on Tertullian, thus speaks of the new life 
after the liberation- wars : Qi The first edition of this mono- 
graph spread first among the German public at the time 
of the beautiful morning dawn of our liberated, re-youthed 
Fatherland, which was also the time of the beginning of 
a new life. It is a time to which all those who lived then 
cannot look back, without deep melancholy, from the 
many profane, un- German doings of the present (1848), 
At that time there was a favourable season for such a 



230 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

monograph. A new life of faith had awakened, and had 
begun anew to animate science also. One felt thereby 
urged on to investigate the stream of Christian life in the 
former centuries ; to engage with love in ancient Christian 
life. A superficial, spiritless, and heartless llluminism, 
the motto of which was : ' How gloriously far we have 
now at length got/' — which, in the conceit of miser- 
able boasting, despised the greatest and most glorious 
events of former centuries; — it was judged by life and 
science." 

llluminism was judged, but it had still a wide exist- 
ence. In the offices, in the chairs, in the pulpits, in the 
literature of the day, among the middle classes of the 
people, it had still the command. But it is in the 
history of the kingdom of God as it is in nature. In 
March, the green blades from the seeds, however un- 
assuming they appear, have a greater future than the 
masses of snow by which they are still covered. Not at 
once does the spring-sun obtain the victory over snow and 
ice ; but the grey masses of ice in the hollow ways do not 
stop the spring ; it is spring nevertheless. The time sub- 
sequent to the liberation-wars represents this struggle of 
the newly-awakened spiritual spring, with the snow-and- 
ice masses of llluminism. This struggle reaches down to 
the present ; but the sun becomes more and more power- 
ful, the winter becomes weaker and weaker. In the old 
northern mythology, Thor, the god of thunder, can in this 
way only get at the winter-giant Thrym, who has stolen 
his hammer, that, disguised in the swan's garment of the 
goddess Fret/a, he betroths himself to him. According 
to TJhlandh ingenious interpretation, the swan's garment 
of Freya is the brightness of spring, in which the summer 
heat, harbouring the thunder, is concealed. Thus, the 
re- animated positive theology after the liberation-wars 



DE WETTE. 231 

was not yet the ripe and ripening' science of the Church, 
furnished with the fire of life and the fire of death, but 
only the brightness of the spring announcing the summer 
of the Church. 

That, as we have just seen, was experienced by Harms? 
with his Theses directed against Rationalism. It was a 
thunder in the first spring which the winter-giants of 
Illuminism did not fear. Even the after- thunder : " Dass 
es rait der Vernunfireligion nichts ist" (t. e. that there is 
nothing in Rationalism, 1819), died away without any 
visible effects. This book contains splendid incontro- 
vertible thoughts, brought out with learning and spirit, 
and in unanswerable syllogisms ; but it came too early. 
The mass rather drank the water which the inexhaust- 
ible Krug offered to them in his pamphlet : Dass es writ 
der Vernunftreiigion dock etwas ist (i. e. there is, after all, 
something in rationalism). But the time was influenced 
in a manner altogether different from that of Harms, by a 
theology which, to speak once more in that figure, appeared 
in the swan's garment. Two names may be mentioned 
as its representatives, De Wette and Hase. Neither of 
these theologians repudiates the rationalistic soil which 
produced them. They declare reason to be the highest 
arbiter in matters of faith ; in their doctrinal conclusions 
they agree, in essential points, with the common Rational- 
ism ; they occupy towards Scripture and the Confession a 
position as free as only Rationalism could demand; and yet 
neither of them is a Rationalist. In De Wette' s doctrinal 
novel: Theodor oder des Zweifiers Weihe (Theodore, or the 
sceptic's consecration, 1821), the hero at first occupies the 
stand-point of Rationalism, but breaks off with theology, 
in order to find the consecration by a positive philosophy. 
The philosophy here alluded to is that of Fries, the 
theological results of which De Wette has represented in 



232 THE 3IEDIATING- THEOLOGY. 

a series of writings. For our purpose, the short, free 
representation in that novel seems to be sufficient and 
well-suited, just because it is a representation of himself. 
" The system of this philosopher appeared to him (Theo- 
dore), to stand just in the midst, between that of Kant 
and that of Schelling, and to combine both. He pro- 
ceeds from an original consciousness of the human mind, 
which he calls faith, by which one is reminded of Schel- 
ling's intellectual intuition and identity. But he does 
not, like the latter, deduce from it the world, with its 
laws and powers, but, adhering to this internal stand- 
point, he shows how this original consciousness displays 
itself in the different activities of the mind, — how the 
whole edifice of human knowledge is built up out of 
experience and internal self- activity, by composition and 
connection ; and thus a world in time and space, and 
under natural laws, represents itself to the mind. But 
this knowledge is only the imperfect image of the sub- 
stance of things, the original image of which is implied 
and concealed in that original consciousness ; and the 
highest truth and satisfaction of the mind is to be 
found in faith only, by the light of which the universe 
appears glorified and purified as an harmonic whole in 
divine glory. He distinguishes between understanding 
and reason ; the former he calls the lower indirect con- 
sciousness, by which the universe, in time and space, and 
in its natural laws, is comprehended; by the latter he 
understands the immediate knowledge, and the whole life 
of the mind, in all its activities ; and as the original 
source and centre of it, he designates faith. He shows 
that knowledge is only one aspect of the human mind ; 
that by the side of it stand the affections and will, and 
that, by all these three faculties only, the life of the mind 
is complete, inasmuch as it enters into connection with the 



DE WETTE. 233 

world by knowledge, as well as by the affections and action. 
With knowledge alone, neither the world nor human life 
can be understood. It is the affections and love only, 
which first give the living meaning, to everything, and 
it is the deed which completes the truth of knowledge and 
feeling." It had never occurred to, and been expressed by, 
Rationalism and Kantianism, that although reason may 
be the arbiter of religion, it does not follow that it is its 
source and seat. We saw that Jacobi and Schleiermacher 
held by the immediate religious life, which the former 
placed in faith, and the latter in the affections. Here 
both are combined, inasmuch as an immediate perception 
of the divine in faith is ascribed to reason. Whilst 
understanding is the faculty for arranging logically the 
perceptions by the senses, reason is the immediate organ 
for the divine. Reason perceives the things of God, be- 
cause God has revealed them to it. u I distinguish between 
reason and the revelation indwelling in it. It is the 
latter which is the ultimate, absolute ground, or original 
source of the former — the sun, as it were, from which all 
the rays of knowledge and spiritual life are proceeding. 
What God is for the universe, that revelation is for the 
human mind ; it is, as it were, its inner God, in whom 
man believes, from whence he receives light and life." 
But all revelation is nothing but the kindling of that 
original light in man. ;i Every man in whom the divine 
has, relatively, obtained the preponderance and dominion 
over the human, is, for his contemporaries, the medium 
of a revelation ; but he in whom the perfect union of the 
divine and human has taken place, has completed the circle 
of revelation, and such faith was in Christ." As, then, 
in the mind of the Mediator, Jesus Christ, it is this 
divine act or faith which overcomes, penetrates, enlightens, 
and purines the understanding, so it will be the internal 



234 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

sense (Gemuth), and not the understanding which under- 
stands the Divine. Upon this internal sense, i. e , the 
faculty in us by which we directly discern the Divine — a 
Mediator cannot exert any influence by means of words, 
but only by deeds, by his moral personality. " The per- 
sonality of the Mediator of a revelation is the first and 
surest guarantee of a revealed faith." By Christ, a com- 
munity, the Church has been founded. But for a moral 
community, a moral spirit, and a moral form are required. 
If the community of Christ is to stand, its spirit must 
be bound to a confession, to an authoritative faith, and 
a form of worship positively ordained. " Now, we can 
fully comprehend the relation of reason to the revealed 
faith. It is an act of reason, viz., of the original inter- 
nal sense to acknowledge a given revelation, in which 
reason appears to be perfected in point of truth and 
goodness, so that reason, as it were, recognizes itself in 
it. This activity of reason, however, is prepared and 
guided by a public or party spirit, which has arisen and 
been propagated in an historical way. Now, in this, 
there is as yet no free, conscious, reflecting examination, 
but every thing still rests in feeling and habit. But the 
understanding is not to be excluded from it. The under- 
standing will, indeed, be allowed to compare and examine 
freely, in order to bring to light the general reasonable- 
ness of the Christian religion; but the jealousy of the 
Church will step as a guard at its side, not in order to 
fetter its liberty, but only to keep alive and stir up the 
religious feeling, in order that it may not be violated and 
suppressed by scepticism. . . The difference between the 
theological and free philosophical science consists in this : 
that the former, in the investigation of truth, proceeds 
from a definite feeling, and an unchangeable presupposi- 
tion, while the latter enters, freely and independently. 



DE VTETTE. 235 

upon the path of inquiry, and pursues it wheresoever 
it may lead." With this view of theology, De Wette 
stood in a very near relation to Schleiermacher > with 
whom, in life too, he was very closely connected. 1 Like 
Schleiermacher, De Wette placed religion in the internal 
sense, in feeling ; only that De Wette' s " religious feeling" 
was more definite, more closely connected with the powers 
of knowledge and will, and more free from Pantheism. 
Like Schleiermacher, De Wette connected his religious 
feeling with positive Christianity, by seeing in Christ the 
absolute Mediator of the new religious life. Like Schleier- 
macher, De Wette left all that is historical, doctrinal, 
objective, which does not stand in immediate connection 
with the religious feeling, to a bold criticism of the under- 
standing, which went much farther than even Rationalism 
had ever done. We need here only refer to the critical 
dissection to which De Wette subjected the historical 
books of the Old Testament, to his anxiety in pointing 
out negative results in the New Testament criticism, and 
to the great concessions which he made to Strauss 3 criti- 
cism of the Life of Jesus. A later period will have much 
difficulty in reconciling the facts, that, by the same man, 
who saw in the gospel the word of life, accounts of 
miracles which he could not explain, were called anec- 
dotes, and words of Christ to which his understanding 
did not reach, were rather imperiously criticised, or 
simply thrown overboard, as being spurious. A few weeks 
before his death (1848), he made this confession regard- 
ing himself: "I fell into a time of confusion ; the unity 
of faith was destroyed. I, too, mixed myself up with this 
struggle— in vain ! I have not settled it." The circum- 



1 Lucke, znr freundschafilichen Erinnerung an Dr. TV. M. L. 
de Wette (Stud. u. Krit, 1850, H. 1). 



2o6 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

stance that a man of such sobriety, could so well under- 
stand the enthusiasm of the German youth after the 
liberation-wars (in consequence of the letter of condolence 
which he wrote to the mother of Sand, the murderer of 
Kotzebue. he was dismissed from his professorship). — that 
a man of such negative tendencies had, notwithstanding, 
so much love for the historical Christ, and such a warm 
heart for the past history of the Church, is a significant 
sign of the change of the times. 

As a second representative of that spirit after the libera- 
tion-wars, we mention Hase. When still a youth, he. in 
quick succession, now in the form of the novel, then of the 
pamphlet, at another in that style suited for educated 
circles (Gnosis), and then again in that of the compendium 
(Dogmaiilc. Life of Jesus. Hiitterus, Church History) ex- 
hibited a stand-point, in which the romantic tendency of 
youth, the influence of modern philosophy, especially of that 
of SchelUng, the impulses of Schleiermacher, the historical 
tendency of the age. and. above all. a religious enthusiasm, 
were so remarkably united, that a great effect could not 
fail to be produced. As a motto of Hase's Theology, 
the commencement of his Gnosis may here be quoted : 
•'•" During a whole night Socrates was looking up to the 
stars above him, and to the unfathomable depth of his 
mind within him ; but when the sun rose, he fell down and 
worshipped the Deity. Thus, every one whose mind rises 
above the chaos of the world, looks up and down, and 
meditates on the riddles above and within him. Through 
the course of long nights, individuals and nations were thus 
meditating. But when their sun rose, and they heard the 
ringing of the morning-bells from heaven, they fell down and 
worshipped the great Spirit of the universe, remembering 
that they themselves were of his divine offspring. Every 
thing human becomes clear to itself, and purifies itself 



BASE. Z61 

only in the divine ; and all love of wisdom is completed 
and perfected in the love of God. It is to such philosophy 
that this book is devoted. Before us there opens up a 
long procession of thousands of years, like a crusade to 
the Holy Land and to the holy grave, seeking and strug- 
gling for divine things. And farther, there lies before us 
that breath of the Infinite which, ever since the uniu- 
tered longings of childhood, has in every sacred hour per- 
vaded us. Earnestly and devoutly science rises in order 
to read in the eternal law of the mind, and to pronounce 
judgment upon the passing, changing phenomenon." Hase 
considers reason as the arbiter of religious truth, but 
reason philosophically developed. His Dogmatih pretends 
to be a system. The characteristic feature of man he 
considers to be liberty striving from the finite to the 
infinite. This liberty, when more closely examined, is a 
relative one ; first, because it has not formed itself; and 
secondly, because it does not reach the infinite. It thus 
points to a power by which it was formed, and to an unat- 
tainable ideal : and that power, that ideal, is God. The 
essence of religion is thus love to God, as the ground and 
aim of this ever-striving liberty. Whilst Pantheism 
(Schelling) views God one-sidedly, as the ground. Ideal- 
ism {FichU) defines him one-sidedly, as the aim. The 
middle unity of both stand-points is the truth. God is the 
absolute personality which, out of free love, is the cause 
of the universe for the perfecting of all created life in the 
kingdom of God. From this point of view, Hase has 
regarded Christ as the ideal man, in whom that striving, 
that love centred, — was sinless, endowed with the power 
of pure humanity over nature, truly risen, the beginner of 
the new life in the kingdom of God. The history of this 
kingdom Hase has represented in his Church History with 
historical skill with a spirit affectionately sympathizing 



238 THE 3IEDIATTXG THEOLOGY. 

with the spirit of past times. A meritorious, although 
rather strange monument of this historical sense, is the 
Hutterus redivicus. in which the systematic theology of 
the old Church is represented from the position of an old 
divine, as he would speak in our own days. On the sup- 
position that Hase was one of its adherents, Rationalism 
had hitherto remained quiet, although shaking its head 
when it perceived all the elements of a re-youthed theo- 
logy ; but it was puzzled by this book. Rokr, with his 
common sense, did not know what to make of the histo- 
rical tendency of this book. " What does this Hutterus 
redwivus want among us?" so his review of it begins. 
" What has the phantom of this evangelical scholastic, 
conjured up from the grave of the sixteenth century, to 
say to the Protestant sons of the nineteenth ? With the 
assistance of the formulas used in the symbolical books 
of the Church, and by the old orthodox divines, in which 
Dr Hase is so well versed, Hutterus is selected to give an 
appearance of Church orthodoxy' to his own peculiar 
doctrinal systems, and to be used on the territory of reli- 
gious science for carrying out a miserable quid pro quo. 
For Dr Hase belongs to the theological school which has 
grown up from the soil of Schilling's philosophy, and 
whose efforts have for their object to transfer its poetical 
dreams into Protestant religious science, and which one 
may call the dogmatico-allegorical school, because it puts 
upon the words, in which our Church once expressed her 
doctrinal definitions, a sense altogether different from that 
which she herself connected with them, although, for 
reasons easily perceived, Dr Hase himself would rather 
have it called the Christian-philosophic school." This 
attack induced Hase to publish his Streitschrlftea (Con- 
troversial Writings, since 1834), which we consider as his 
most important theological production. Hase was privi- 



HASE. 239 

leged to pronounce the final judgment, in the scientific 
law-suit, which, ever since the beginning of the century, 
had been carried on against Rationalism. 

;; There was a time when that Rationalism prevailed in 
theology, and, in the name of the celebrated IUuminism. 
without farther ceremony, declared all opponents to be 
ignorant and unreasonable. Let us not forget that it 
occupied a positive position towards Christianity also, and 
that especially in opposition to those, who, in the general 
destruction, went beyond everything Christian, it main- 
tained a friendship for Christianity as a necessity of rea- 
son. But it appears that now, at least in Germany, its 
mission is fulfilled. That which has rescued modern times 
from this Rationalism may be reduced to these three heads: 
First. The awakening of a strict sympathising historical 
sense for the condition and circumstances of the past. All 
sciences have been touched by it. It is well known how, 
at the time of the rationalistic terrorism, the manifesta- 
tions of piety in the middle ages were misunderstood and 
misrepresented by the celebrated Church historians of that 
period, and how the Biblical histories have been abused 
by expositors, in order to explain the miracles. It be- 
longed to Rationalism to do away, in religion, with all his- 
torical peculiarities, and to put the purely rational in their 
stead. The second blow which was inflicted upon the 
dominion of Rationalism, proceeded from the awakening in 
the people of a previously repressed religious fervour, by 
which the religious feeling was reponed in its own proper 
place. In systematic theology, rationalism has altogether 
disregarded this place due to the religious feeling. In 
homiletics it maintains the principle, that one must work 
upon the heart through the understanding only — a prin- 
ciple not acknowledged even by the political orators of 
antiquity, and which no great orator has ever followed. 



240 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

It has, finally, almost altogether misunderstood and mis- 
used the poetry which is contained in the old traditions of 
the Church : the mutilation of the old hymns is a proof 
and example of this. We do not mean to charge Rational- 
ism with what was more or less the prevailing tendency of 
the time ; but since it is just in that Rationalism, that that 
tendency has chiefly taken a hold, it is natural that a 
changed age, which has again put to its lips the full cup 
of life, should turn away from Rationalism. Finally, the 
most important objection has grown up in the soil of 
science itself. Be it hereby openly declared, that this 
Rationalism is wanting in scientific power and acuteness." 
Hase demonstrates from Wegscheider's " Dogmatik/' 
that it assumes reason to be the highest authority, with- 
out establishing, in a scientific way, what are the laws of 
reason in matters of faith ; — that that which Rationalism 
calls reason, is nothing else than common intellectual 
sense. " It is this, indeed, which is the highest authority 
of Rationalism, and it is in its name that Wegsdielder 
gives forth his criticism ; it is just this, moreover, which 
constitutes the empiricism of this proceeding." He goes 
on to say, that every age has its common sense, which is 
partly a certain feeling for truth, partly a sum of convic- 
tions in the common popular consciousness. The latter 
element is something very changeable. " The common 
sense of Rationalism is partly a result of historical and 
philosophical investigations, which have obtained a cer- 
tain general authority, and partly also, a certain sound 
feeling for religious truth, which has proceeded from the 
general popular life. It is hence very important that 
there be much, and right common sense among theologians, 
and we must confess that our age is not deficient in it ; 
but jt is utterly wrong that this common sense, solely in 
and from itself, and without in any way vindicating itself 



INFLUENCE OF SCHLEIERMACHER. 241 

in a scientific way from the nature of the mind, should 
pretend to be the highest law of science." 

These arguments were incontrovertible, and the num- 
ber of misunderstandings, yea, even the coarseness with 
which Eohr, in the progress of the controversy, meant to 
put them down, had no other result than still more to 
expose his cause. But that about which the rationalists 
felt most keenly was, that this blow was inflicted with 
the very weapons of Rationalism. Hase assured them that 
he did not contend against Rationalism as a genus, but 
against a species of it only, viz. — against Rationalismus 
vulgaris. The school which, in the first instance, reaped 
the advantages of victory was a higher kind of Ration- 
alism, striving after a reconciliation with positive Chris- 
tianity. 

This is, in general, the character of the theology which 
prevailed from about 1817 to 1840, viz., a striving to 
reconcile the natural and rational with the positive doc- 
trine and ordinances of the Church. The theology of 
this time may simply be designated as a theology of 
mediation. "What it aimed at was the doctrine of the 
Church, but not because it was the doctrine of the 
Church, and in the manner in which it was so, but only 
the substance of it ; and by this it always understood that 
which was reconcileable with the general religious spirit. 
That which we have just said of De Wette and Hase may, 
in the meanwhile, be considered as an illustration. It 
was especially from two different quarters that this me- 
diating effort was put forward, viz., that of Schleiermacher, 
and that of Hegel. We have already exhibited the fun- 
damental character of these stand-points ; let us now con- 
sider the forms it assumed in the field of theology. 

Just as Prussia, after the liberation-wars, was the 
hearth of the new life, even so the newly-founded Uni- 






2i'2 THE MEDIATING- THEOLOGY. 

versity of Berlin was the head- quarters of the renewed 
theology. After the University of Halle had been an- 
nexed to the kingdom of Jerome Napoleon. Schkier- 
maclier had gone to Berlin (1807). in the hope, as we see 
from a letter to Geisz* 1 of obtaining a place in the newly 
established University. He had greatly contributed to its 
foundation by his publication. GelegentJiche GMan&en 
ilber Universitaten im Deutschen Sinn ; nefat einem 
Anhange ilber eine neu zu grundende, i.e.. Stray Thoughts 
about Universities, in the German sense ; with an Ap- 
pendix on a new one to be founded (1808). He was a 
pillar of the Theological Faculty, on whom especially 
De Wette and Neander were leaning. A master in the 
chair, as certainly few academical teachers have been, he 
lectured, as is proved by his now published prelections, 
not only on almost all the branches of theology, but also 
on the prineipal departments of philosophy (dialectics, 
ethics, politics, aesthetics, paedagogy. and the history of 
philosophy). His position as the Secretary to the Philo- 
sophical Class of the Berlin Academy of Sciences (since 
1814), induced him to write a number of distinguished 
articles in the department of philosophy. The classical 
translator of Plato remained in an uninterrupted literacy 
communion and intercourse with Buttmann. Bockh, Hem- 
dorf* Lachnann. and other eminent philologists. Not 
long after his settlement at Berlin. Schleiermacher found 
employment in the ministry of the Interior. When this 
situation was abolished, he became one of the principal 
agents in all the ecclesiastical movements which proceeded 
from Berlin, especially in the affairs of the Union, Liturgy. 
Constitution f the Church, etc. Whoever in Berlin felt 
deeper religious cravings, and were capable of loftier con- 
ceptions, collected around his pulpit in Trinity Church 
1 Brief weehsel mit Gasz. S. 72. 



INFLUENCE OF SCHLEIEKMACHEE. 243 

(since 1809). And it was not only on the territories of science 
and of the Church that he was a living agent, but also in 
the general development of the age. As he had taken the 
most lively interest in the liberation of his father-land, 
so all the fresh youthful movements after the liberation- 
wars found in him a warm representative. Himself a 
never-fading youth, he sympathised with youth, with that 
keen perception of individualities which was characteristic 
of him. His object was, not to found a school, but to 
stimulate, and that he gained in a most extraordinary 
degree. One can well imagine what an influence such a 
man, in connection with De Wette and Xeander, must 
have exercised on the immediate sphere of his activity. 
In the newly founded University of Bonn, Nitzsch, Bleek, 
and Sack, laboured altogether in the spirit of Schleier- 
machei\ In Breslau, Gasz was the practical echo of his 
friend. LucJce, in Gbttingen, and Schweizer, now in 
Zurich, followed entirely in the steps of the master. 
And how large is the number of theologians on whom 
Schleiermacher has exercised a decisive influence ! We 
mention only Baumgarten, Crusius, Hase, Ullmann, Tho- 
luck, Mailer, Rothe, Dorner. Schleiermacher died in 
1834, still in full vigour, after a lovely dream of a final 
reconciliation between faith and philosophy. 

But the speculative reconciliation with the doctrine of 
the Church found likewise its centre in Berlin. When 
Hegel was, from his retired life in Nuremberg, called to 
Heidelberg, it was especially Daub who stood by his 
side. In this original theologian, the dialectic progress 
of modern philosophy has, as it were, been- personified. 
At first (besides some Essays, especially in his Sermons 
according to Kantian principles, and in his Katechetik) 
he was a Kantian, then inclined to Fichte, and in his 
Theologoitmena (1806) and "Introduction to Christian 



244 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

Dogmatik" (1809), he applied Schelling's doctrine on 
theology. As Schelling closed with a theosophic dualism, 
so Daub, in his Judas Iscariot (1816 and 1818), dis- 
played a snpernaturalisra of speculation, almost border- 
ing upon Manicheism. This work bears witness to his 
struggle with Hegel's phenomenology and logic. Hegel 
prevailed in him; and this theologian, although already 
growing old, had still the mental power to elaborate, from 
all sides, his theological view, from the newly obtained 
principle. This theologian, representing as he does, the 
change of modern philosophy, was, notwithstanding, of 
anything but a versatile nature. He was a man of old 
German simplicity, moral energy, grand objectivity, warm 
faith, of a mind of creative intellectual power, united to 
a great store of knowledge and experience. With a great 
talent for teaching, he was, nevertheless, in his literary 
productions, too abstract, too abstruse, indeed, to have 
influenced a large circle. This is specially the case with 
his last work: Die dogmatische Theologie jetziger Zeit (i. e., 
the Doctrinal Theology of the Modern Times, 1833),— 
" this Hell of Dante," as Strauss called it, " heated with 
the doctrinal systems, commentaries, and theological 
journals of the last sixty years, in which Ghibellines are 
roasting by the side of Guelphs, supranaturalists by the 
side of rationalists, — through the confined groups of which 
the spirit of the departed immortal philosopher (Hegel) 
accompanies, as a cicerone, the theologian, just as Dante 
was led through his, by the spirit of Virgil." The effect of 
this work was lost, because, in order to continue with 
Strauss, "it was written in the language of the Olympians.'' 
In 1827, he wrote to his pupil Rosenkranz,—" Vacation, 
you say; has the old man not yet got his everlasting 
vacation ? No, my dear friend, not yet ; nor do I desire 
any ; I wish, if possible, to die in the chair docendo." 



INFLUENCE OF HEGEL. 245 

This wish was granted to him. On the 19th November, 
1836, he was seized, while lecturing, with an apoplectic 
fit, after having just uttered the words, " Life is not the 
highest good." 1 — In the dim hope and desire of opening 
a practical sphere for his philosophy, Hegel accepted, in 
1818, a call to Berlin, where he soon acquired an influ- 
ential position. While the enthusiasm of the German 
youth had its advocates in Schleiermacher and De Wette, 
Hegel, in the preface to his fiechtsphilosophie (Philosophy 
of Jurisprudence), expressed himself in a manner almost 
contemptuous, about the doings of this school which 
followed the impulse of the heart : — (i A leader of this 
shallowness, which calls itself philosophizing, M. Fries, 
has not hesitated on a solemn occasion, which has be- 
come notorious, at the Wartburg-feast, in a speech on 
State and State Constitution, to give utterance to the 
idea, ' That in a nation in which a true patriotic spirit 
prevails, life would be imparted to every business of 
the public affairs from beneath, by the people; that 
living societies, indissolubly united by the holy tie of 
friendship, would devote themselves to every single work 
of national education and public service.' It is chiefly 
the aim and meaning of that shallowness to place science, 
not on the development of the thought and idea, but 
rather on immediate intention, and accidental imagina- 
tion, and in the same way to dissolve the rich organization 
of the moral element in itself which the State exhibits, — 
the architectural beauty of its reasonableness, into the 
pap of 'heart, friendship, enthusiasm.'" In 1821, 
Schleiermacher' s Glaubenslehre (System of Theology) 

1 Rosenkranz {Erinnerungen an Carl Daub. Berlin, 1837), and 
Strauss (Charakteristikenxmd Kritiken) have splendidly charac- 
terized their teacher. Hermann {Die speculative Theologie in 
ikrer Entwickelung durch Daub), is not equal to his subject. 



246 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

appeared, which makes the feeling of dependence the 
foundation and fountain of the doctrines of religion. In 
the preface to the Rdigions-PhUosophu (Philosophy of 

Religion) of his pupil Hinrichs (1822), Hegel declared, — 
■ ; If religion in man he founded on feeling only, this feeling 
can be correctly defined only as the feeling of depend- 
ence ; and hence the dog would be the best Christian, for 
he has this feeling most strongly developed in himself, 
and lives chiefly in this feeling. The dog has even crav- 
ings for salvation, w hen his hunger is appeased bya bone." 
The great antithesis, which we thus see pervading the age 
of Illuminism and Renovation, the antithesis between a re- 
ligion which is defined and determined by reason, and a 
religion which depends upon the emotional life, entered, in 
Schleiermacher and Hegel, into its most significant phasis. 
Two personalities, thus coined, could, according to the laws 
of nature, only repel one another. In a city so excitable, 
and so dependent upon intellectual impulses as Berlin, 
Sehleiermacher. with his freshness of life, his sympathy 
for individualities, his intellectual presence, his practical 
development of thought, and his rhetorical skill, was the 
man of the moment : while Heoel. with the granite firm- 
ness of his dialectics, with his earnest, manly surrender 
to the objective powers of life, for a long time attracted 
only a limited circle of men inquiring more deeply. 1 In 

1 Botho (Yorstudien fur Lehen und Eanst, S. 385) thus char- 
acterizes his delivery : '• Hegel had to bring to light the most 
powerful thoughts from the deepest ground of things. Alto- 
gether absorbed by his subject, he seemed to evolve it only out 
of itself, and for its own sake ; and yet it originated only from 
himself. He began stammering, strove forward, began once 
more, stopped again. The proper word seemed always to fail 
him ; but it was just then that he most surely hit upon it. Ad- 
vancing slowly and considerately through -. middle links, ap- 
parently insignificant, some full thought had been limited so as 
to present one side only, had been split into distinctions, and 



INFLUENCE OF HEGEL. 247 

the theological faculty. Marlieinkke was decidedly on 
Hegel's side. He conies nearest to Daub. He had not 
the depth and originality of Daub, but a better style. 
He had not Daub's simplicity and strength of character, 
but he was more practical, and was possessed of a more 
religious and ecclesiastical sense. Daub was only a 
professor, but JTarheinicke was also a minister, and 
something of an ecclesiastical prince. Like Daub, Mar- 
heinicke too had been led to Hegel, by striving to reconcile 
the doctrine of the Church with science. This reconci- 
liation is presented to us in the second edition of his 
;; Dogmatik " (1827). More successful than in this sys- 
tem of theology, which was more assuming than demon- 
strative, and which dealt in a very summary way with 
Scripture and history, Marheinicke was, in his " Sym- 
bolik" (1810), a work which marked a new epoch in the 
sense of a historiography entering into the depth of the 
phenomena, and which has been excelled in individual re- 
sults, but not in the spirit and cast of the whole. Like 
Daub and Markeinic&e, so Hinrichs too, had been led to 
Hegel by the positive tendency of the age. " From my 
youth," so he writes to Hegel (Hegel's Werle, xvii. S. 
304), (i religion had always been to me the highest and 
most sacred object, and I hold it to be true, for the 
simple reason that the spirit of mankind cannot be de- 
ceived in this respect. But science took from me the 

involved in contradictions, the victorious solution of which had 
the effect of finally reconciling that which was at first opposed. 
It was just in these depths of things, apparently inexplicable, 
that that powerful mind was moving and digging with grand 
self-possessed delight and calmness. It was then that his voice 
rose, that his eye flashed brightly upon those assembled, and 
shone with the calmly burning fire and brightness of deep con- 
viction, while, with words never failing, he touched all the 
heights and depths of the soul./' 



248 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

demonstrating element in which I was accustomed to be- 
hold truth ; and what was more natural than that I 
should be anxious to remove, by means of science, the 
greatest discord and the deepest despair from within me, 
and thus to obtain a reconciliation of the elements of 
science. Then I said to myself: If that which Christi- 
anity brings forth as the absolute truth, cannot be conceived 
by means of philosophy in a purely scientific form, so 
that the idea itself shall be this form, I will have nothing 
more to do with any philosophy." The same desire led 
Goschel, Gabler, Rozenkranz, and others, to Hegel. What, 
in general, raised Hegel's philosophy more and more every 
year in the Prussian State, was the spirit of restoration 
on which it took its stand. Around Hegel a school had 
soon gathered, which carried his thoughts into all sciences. 
While entertaining the strongest hopes regarding the 
future prospects of his system, Hegel died of Cholera 
(1831). "A man," so Marheinicke spoke at his grave, 
" who, like this monarch in the realm of thought, has 
reared a new edifice of science on the immoveable rock of 
the mind, has achieved an immortality such as few have 
done." Forster added : " Let it henceforth be our calling 
to preserve, proclaim, and confirm his doctrine. No 
Peter, it is true, will rise, who would have the presump- 
tion to call himself his vicar ; but his kingdom, the 
kingdom of thought, will extend more and more, not in- 
deed without being attacked, but yet without being 
effectually resisted. No successor will ever ascend the 
vacant throne of Alexander ; satraps will divide among 
themselves the provinces bereft of their ruler ; but as at 
that period, Greek civilization, so now, this German 
science, which was excogitated and created by Hegel, 
during many a waking night, spent beside his quiet lamp, 
will become world-conquering in the domain of spirits. " 



INFLUENCE OF HEGEL. 249 

This comparison with Alexander was fulfilled in a 
different sense. As Alexander's monarchy, so Hegel's su- 
premacy in the domain of philosophy was, after his death, 
broken up by the internal strifes of his disciples. While 
Hegel lived, his system had wrought in the sense of a 
restoration. As in Hegel himself, so we find in Daub, 
Marheinicke, Hinrichs, and others, a certain massiveness 
and heaviness of thought, an inability to comprehend 
with elegance, acnteness, and freshness, the phenomena 
of life as they occur and exist, and a thorough and violent 
transformation of facts into notions. With the greatest 
assurance, this school asserted the agreement of Christi- 
anity with their doctrine ; but the question was, whether 
this assurance would stand the trial of criticism. In the 
first instance, there arose a controversy as to whether 
immortality in the sense of personal existence after 
death, was taught by the school. Eichter maintained 
that Hegel did not know it ; Goschel, who by his high 
position, and his mighty individual power, enjoyed great 
authority in the school, endeavoured to prove the reverse 
(1835), but evidently by a forced interpretation, and in 
opposition to the whole sense of the system. Then ap- 
peared the "Life of Jesus" by Strauss (1835). Here mental 
elements appeared which hitherto had not been common 
in the school, a powerful realism, an eminent critical 
understanding, a rounded, perspicuous, and fresh style, 
a thorough entering into, and mastery of the learned 
materials. By these means Strauss brought out the 
result, that the historical existence of the God-man, which 
Hegel had represented in a very obscure manner, was 
against the principles of his system, as the idea could 
never exhaust all its riches on the person of one indivi- 
dual ; that not Christ, but mankind, was the Son of God. 
The Christ, as proclaimed by the gospels, is historically 



250 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

impossible, because the sources contradict each other and 
the laws of historical reality, and is to be explained as a 
myth only, from the Messianic expectations of the time. 
This publication called the whole of theology into the 
lists, since the very existence of Christianity, was at 
stake. In the first instance, the school, from which 
Strauss came, had to decide. That which was brought 
forward by Bauer, Schaller, Gbschel, Rosenkranz, and 
others, was so far from entering into the main question, 
that the belief in the power of HegeVs dialectics and its 
agreement with Christianity, was not a little weakened. 
Strauss, however, did not content himself with transfer- 
ring the life of Jesus into the world of myths ; but in his 
Glaubenslehre (1840), he proved that the whole Christian 
religion was dissolved by modern science ; the religion 
which was alone fit for our age was the worship of genius. 
After the negative tendency had once begun to speak out, 
it thought itself bound to remain consistent even to the 
destruction of all positive foundations of life. After it 
had been proved by evidence, that God was not a person 
elevated above the world, but had an existence only in 
the self-consciousness of mankind, Feuerbach did not risk 
anything in representing God to be merely an imaginary 
counter-part of the Ego. While Strauss had declared 
the Christ of the gospels to be the product of the myth, 
unintentionally inventing, Bruno Bauer, went the length 
of declaring Him to be an invention of the so-called 
creative original evangelist, who, according to him, was 
Mark. While^ at its former stage, Hegelianism ac- 
knowledged faith as a lower but fully warranted stage 
of consciousness, the negative spirits who had their 
organ, first in the Hallesche Jahrhucher, afterwards 
in the Deutsche Jahrbucher, proposed to themselves to 
persecute every one who still adhered to and professed 



INFLUENCE OF HEGEL. 251 

the faith of the fathers, and to pour blasphemous mockery 
upon every thing sacred to the Christian faith. While 
Hegelianism had formerly co-operated in the restoration, 
the Hegelites now, under the name of Protestantism, 
openly proclaimed revolution. Stormy waters may cause 
fearful destruction, but they cannot continue. Strauss, 
Bauer, Feuerbach, Rage, Vischer," are no more ; Bauer 
in Tubingen, however, still for some time continued 
to advance these views, after his pupil Strauss had 
left the scene. The sphere of his critical operations is 
history, specially the history of religious thought. His 
forte lies in bringing it into union with his own sphere of 
thought by means of criticism, combinations, and dialec- 
tics. In this manner he has treated the Greek mythology, 
the views of the Manicheans and Gnostics, the doctrines 
of the Atonement and the Trinity, and lastly, and espe- 
cially, the sources of the primitive Christianity. In 
transforming this world of thought into his own, he is 
deficient, notwithstanding his thorough study of the 
sources, in respect for the facts as such, in sympathy for 
the life out of which the thoughts spring up, in an eye 
for the individuality and peculiarity of the phenomena. 
The poet says, " thoughts may dwell close upon each 
other, but the things in space roughly strike against each 
other." It is just because Bauer considers thoughts only 
to be the substance of the religious phenomena, and his 
own view to be the truth of all thoughts, that it happens 
to him that he gives himself up to boundless combi- 
nations. Thus, in opposition to Moliler, he dissolved 
the Augustinian element of Protestantism into the Pan- 
theism of modern philosophy, made Schleiermacher a 
Gnostic, compared Eusebius with Herodotus, etc. In 
a truly destructive manner has primitive Christianity 
been treated by him. Starting from the idea, that 



252 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

the foundation of Christianity was Ebionitisni. with 
which Gnosticism afterwards joined — a union prepared 
by the more liberal Pauline views — he has, with unheard 
of arbitrariness, set aside, in the canon and in the first 
monuments of Christian literature, every thing which did 
not agree with that hypothesis ; while, on the other hand, 
he gives an importance, reaching far beyond their his- 
torical sphere, to the forms of the Judaic Christianity. 
and to every thing which he thinks he can consider as 
such. He was assisted by able pupils, such as Zellcr 
and Schwealer. The most eminent exegetical and his- 
torical scholars replied to Bauer. But the experience 
that all truth rebounds from prejudiced and biassed 
investigation, — the opposite views which rose in the school 
itself, — and the exhaustion which the books on these 
subjects unceasingly called forth by one another, could 
not fail at last to produce ; — all this has destroyed the 
influence of this school. 

When the supremacy of the Hegelian system was thus 
broken up (since about 1840), a favourable moment 
seemed to arise for those philosophers who had gone be- 
yond Hegel, and occupied a more positive relation to- 
wards historical Christianity (Fichte the son, Weisze, 
Branisz, Chalybaeus, Fischer, UlricL and others). It is 
certain that, in the circle of these philosophers, a con- 
siderable amount of talent existed, and a positive theology 
could not refuse to offer its assistance to the effort to pro- 
duce a Christian philosophy out of the results of modern 
speculation. Yet these philosophers could not gain any 
influence how often soever they attempted it ; first, be- 
cause every one of them, after all, brought a peculiar sys- 
tem of his own — and hence, for the unprejudiced inquirer, 
a proof of the insecurity and arbitrariness of philosophi- 
cal systems ; secondly, because the positive, which they 



SCHELLING. 253 

brought was, after all, not positive enough for the deeper 
tendency of the time, while the dialectics, from which it 
resulted, was not sufficiently dialectic ; finally, because the 
spirit of that time in general pursued practical interests. 
Moreover, the authors of these views had intentionally 
pointed to the mysterious master in the south of Germany, 
to Schelling, as the restorer of true philosophy. And, 
indeed, when he at length, in 1841, appeared in Berlin, 
it seemed as though he was to break his long silence. 
The loftiest expectations were entertained. There was, 
indeed, something wonderful in the spectacle of a man 
who, when still a youth, had performed a great philoso- 
phical task, coming in the evening of his life into the 
midst of his opponents' camp, in order to bring the whole 
movement to a close. And the promises with which 
Schelling appeared — to rear a castle in which, henceforth, 
philosophy was to dwell in safety, etc. — could not but in- 
crease still more the expectations which had been awak- 
ened. These promises might, and did, indeed, raise 
suspicions. Even although Schelling had had the abso- 
lute truth to offer, the aged thinker might have known that 
truth does not manifest itself to the strained expectations 
of the masses. The lectures, which were communicated to 
a most brilliant audience, could not remain a secret from 
wider circles. They were published by Frauenstadt and by 
Paulus. A theosophical system came out, reminding men 
strongly of Gnosticism, in which the history of the world 
was looked upon as a dime process. Heathenism was to 
him the period of the enmity of the creature, Christianity 
that of its reconciliation ; and after the times of James, 
Peter, Paul, he now announced the age of John, the period 
of peace between faith and science. Of that in which 
Hegel's strength lay, of methodical demonstration, there 
was, if possible, still less to be seen, than in his former 



254 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

writings ; and history, mythology, and theology, are very 
rudely dealt with. The union with Christianity was evi- 
dently a gnostic appearance only. According to what was 
whispered abroad by the notables among Sehelling's 
hearers, a stroke of immense consequence had been struck 
in the realm of mind ; but up to this day little has been 
seen of it. Hegelianism opposed the destructive sen- 
tences which fell from this master's tripod, and the tri- 
umph of its old antagonists, who, exultingly, as far as they 
could do, greeted Schelling as the anti-Hegel : yet, it was 
not the arguments of Schelling, but the circumstance 
that the master of modern speculation publicly and em- 
phatically renounced his progeny, which fully destroyed 
the authority of Hegelianism. Public interest withdrew 
more and more from philosophy, and has now nearly sunk 
to zero. Fichte, the younger, says in the preface to his 
Journal for Philosophy, which was renewed in 1852 : " It 
is now to be lamented that after the period of a one-sided 
prevalence of philosophical speculations over the so-called 
exact sciences, as well as over practical activity, there 
seems to have fallen upon us that nervous depression 
which usually follows excessive effort. Because philo- 
sophy cannot perform what, in its speculative conceit, it 
promised, therefore all philosophy is rejected as useless, 
profitless, and superfluous. Because, with dogmatic pre- 
sumption, it "meddled with things which lie beyond its 
sphere, especially with the springs of purely practical 
conditions, with ecclesiastical and social questions of the 
moment, where it could produce only confusion, and 
furnish no light, — therefore all philosophical inquiry is 
regarded as dangerous, and men seek, by all possible means, 
to suppress the tendency to it. But even in the terri- 
tory of philosophy, there prevails at present a kind of 
apathy and indifference, or, if one may call it so, rather a 



schleiekmacher's system- 255 

careless security. The most opposite principles, the 
most antagonistic tendencies, exist apparently in perfect 
peace ; every school, every class, almost every individual 
philosopher goes on rearing on his territory a small hut 
beside his small house, as if, besides this, there existed 
nothing in the world worth while noticing." 

When Hase assailed the common Rationalism, this was 
done in the interest of the philosophical Rationalism ; but 
the latter, too, as we have just seen, was giving way. Its 
downfall, as it seems, could not but increase the influence 
of that school, which held by the immediate religious 
life, the religious feeling, and which we saw attained its 
greatest eminence in Schleiermacher. We saw that this 
great theologian came, from the stand-point of a Panthe- 
istic mysticism, nearer to positive Christianity. The agree- 
ment of his religious consciousness with the evangelical 
Confession, he exhibited in his principal work, " The 
Christian faith, according to the principles of the evan- 
gelical Church, systematically represented." 1 All religion 
is, according to him, even still based on feeling. As for- 
merly he called the religious feeling, sense of, and taste 
for, the infinite, so he now called it a feeling of dependence. 
But this feeling of dependence is an absolute one, as dis- 
tinct from the conditional, which is called forth in us by 
relations to the world ; for we can react against objects of 
the world, but not against God. Yet the religious con- 
sciousness does not immediately rise to God, but through 
the medium of the phenomena of the world ; so that it is 
only in co-operating with the consciousness of the world 
that the consciousness of God is called forth. The con- 
sciousness of God ought to prevail during every moment, 

1 u Der Christliche Glaube nach den Grundsatzen der Evan- 
gelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt" (1st ed. 1821; 
2d ed. 1830). 



256 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

and in every event of life ; but in our natural condition 
we do not find this to be so. In the natural man, the 
religious consciousness is fettered by sensual conscious- 
ness. But in the community which has proceeded from 
Jesus of Nazareth, we obtain an emancipation, a redemp- 
tion of the consciousness of God. This cannot be the 
effect of the community as such, inasmuch as it consists 
of men in need of salvation, but of the divine life only 
which the founder of the Church left to His people. Jesus 
Christ was the man possessed of the absolute power and 
energy of the consciousness of God, the ideal man who has 
redeemed the world by the life which proceeds from Him. 
To represent in a scientific way the Christian conscious- 
ness, as it exists in the redeemed as a matter of fact, is 
the task of systematic theology. It does not prove, but 
it evolves the existing feeling in its connection. But 
that this consciousness, thus evolved, agrees with the 
Protestant consciousness, is proved by texts from the sym- 
bolical books of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches. 
And since systematic theology is not a proof and demon- 
stration of any object of knowledge, but only the scientific 
description of a part of the mind, it has nothing* at all to 
do with philosophy. 

This assurance of Schleiermacher, as to his being in- 
dependent of philosophy, was not readily believed by his 
contemporaries ; they found in his " Glanbenslehre" the 
same philosophy which they had found in his " Discourses 
on Religion," viz., Spinozism, and the proofs which 
Strauss (see Characteristiken and Kritiken, S. 146, ff.) 
gave, have not yet been invalidated. But certainly, reli- 
gion is a life independent of all philosophy ; to have de- 
monstrated this is the great merit of Schleiermacher. It 
is, however, a different question, whether the feeling of 
dependence be the vital foundation of all religion. What 



TWESTEN. NITZSCH. 257 

this " feeling of dependence" really meant, the principal 
theologians did not exactly understand, even after the 
explanations which Schleiermacher gave in his two Se?id- 
sckreiben an LiicJce. But even supposing that the feeling 
of dependence had proved itself to be a fact of life, a 
fact of life is not yet a fact of truth. And a conscious- 
ness must certainly know of something ; consciousness of 
God is a knowledge of God ; Christian consciousness of 
God is a knowledge of God as He has revealed himself to 
us through Jesus Christ. Of God, however, philosophy, 
too, knows something, and so does history of Christ. 
Schleiermacher developes the philosophical idea of God in 
his Dialefctik, and the facts of the life of Jesus, in lectures 
in which a very bold criticism is to be found. Of what 
use, then, was it to systematic theology to be told that it 
did not stand in need of philosophy, if it was unable to 
prove the matter of its faith in any other way than by 
pointing to the fact of its existence in the mind, and thus 
stood powerless by the side of philosophy which sought its 
God in its own ways. When, after Schleiermacher' 8 
death, his Dialelctih brought out an idea of God which was 
thoroughly Pantheistic, but agreeing well with the state- 
ments of his Glaubenslehre, it could no more be doubted 
that theology had ploughed with the heifer of philosophy. 
But, if such be the case, the vital nerve of this Glaicbens- 
Ichre is cut. After the impulses which have proceeded 
from it shall have been digested, it will be to posterity 
like the doctrinal monologue of a great theologian. 

In ScMeiermacher's school a development took place 
similar to that which had occurred in HegeVs. One part 
of it entered into a positive relation to the doctrine of the 
Church (Twesten, Nitzsch) while another (Jonas, Sydow) 
joined the dissolving tendencies of the time. In this re- 
spect, Twesten says of himself: "He who has paid some 

R 



2b8 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

attention to my exposition in the first volume, must have 
perceived that I do not altogether follow Schleiermacher 
in his definition of the relation of Gnosis to the religious 
consciousness, but that I assign to it a more prominent 
position. A consequence of that is, that differences which. 
in the first instance, concern the element of cognition, 
must lead to differences in doctrinal views also ; and this 
accounts for my thinking differently, partly in the rela- 
tion of doctrinal theology to the declarations of Holy 
Scripture.. and partly also on many philosophical notions 
and doctrines. To this I may add farther that 
inaclier's relation to the doctrine of the Church is not the 
same as mine.''' x There was little consistency in this tem- 
pering of the theology of feeling with speculative elements; 
it was more natural to reduce both of the elements into a 
higher unity. Rothe, lUnKui/i. Dorner, Lange. and 
others, represent this stand-point. In a time when the 
great creations of German philosophy lay scattered and 
broken in pieces, a theology which, out of its ruins built 
speculative huts, in which the so-called Christian con- 
sciousness could take up its residence, seemed to have all 
the sound intellects of the time in its favour. It claimed 
the past, inasmuch as it pretended to stand on the ground 
of the Confessions of the Reformation, and at the same 
time called itself the Theology of the Future : it made 
considerable concessions to modern science, and yet it did 
not abandon the claim of being in harmony with the doc- 
trine of the Church. In the consciousness of its scientific 
depth, it called itself the ;; German Theology/'' and yet it 
paid attention to the present practical interests of the 
Church also. UMmann's Wesen des Christenthums (*. e. 
Essence of Christianity. 1S45). may be considered as the 

i Dogmat'd IL, S. XIX. 



ULLMAXN. 259 

average profession of this school. Christianity is not 
essentially doctrine, as Rationalists and Supematuralists 
have one-sidedly said ; nor a law of morality, as Kantian- 
ism has asserted ; nor redemption, as Sehleiermacher 
would have it ; but it is union of man and God, effected 
by the person of its Founder, a person perfectly united 
with God, perfectly divine, and perfectly human. This 
definition, at first sight, seems to be quite sound, and in 
harmony with the doctrine of the Church. But its truth 
is not proved from the formal principle of Protestantism, 
but by means of a dialectic settlement with the various, 
and especially the recent views of Christianity which have 
appeared in the course of the history of the Church ; and 
it proves its correctness, by showing that from this point 
of view all these views are organically comprehended 
in one ; and hence the definition of the essence and 
nature of Christianity is a product of mediation. It is, 
then, not justification by faith, as the doctrine of the 
Church so emphatically declares, — it is not even redemp- 
tion, in the sense of Sehleiermacher. but the union of man 
with God through Jesus Christ, which is the central point 
of Christianity. This union is a vital union, an union of 
man with God in the Holy Spirit, as sometimes, also, it 
is expressed, which manifests itself in all the faculties. 
The ideal of such an union is Christ. With some unes- 
sential modifications, we have thus here the Christ of 
Sehleiermacher. It is in their view of the person of Christ 
that the theological systems have always characterised 
themselves. Dorner, Rothe, Lange, and others, saw 
in Christ the ideal man, in whom the human species has 
been personified, the personal recapitulation of man- 
kind, '*' the man of the species " (Gaitungsmensch). 1 The 

1 A comprehensive representation of this view is given by 
Liebner: Christologie, S. 27, ff. 



260 THE MEDIATING THEOLOGY. 

ideal man originated from Schleiermacher ; the "man of 
the species'' was a production of speculation. The idea 
which this school entertained of Christ is thus an expres- 
sion of the combination between the theology of feeling 
and the speculative school. By means of the same 
agents, Rothe came to the result, that the State is the 
realisation of the Church, — a view by which almost all 
the theologians of the time were offended, although it 
had a support in the practice of the Erastian State 
Churches. Notwithstanding all objections, Rothe re- 
turned to this result in his Etliik (1845). The specula- 
tive element and the religious consciousness have here 
united into a theosophy, which feels itself to be independ- 
ent of philosophy proper. " I declare expressly that this 
work does not contain anything of philosophy, but only 
theology and theosophy, although I wish it to be noticed 
by philosophers also, — and that I make no claim whatsoever 
to understand anything of philosophy." But who was to 
receive and acknowledge these results ? The convictions, 
confessions, symbolical books of both the ancient and the 
Protestant Churches know nothing of that Trinity, that 
Christ, that Church which this Ethik taught ; while 
Dialectics, which had produced these views, fled from the 
court of speculation, under the assurance of not being 
philosophy. It was obviously a blending of the theology 
of feeling and of speculation, the centre of which was an 
ingenious individuality pervaded by Christian elements, 
and formed in the school of modern philosophy. If any- 
one should yet doubt whether this combination of phi- 
losophy and Christian consciousness was deficient in the 
objective exponent, he must be freed from all hesitation 
by the dilettanteism of Lange assuming every hue. 

The theology of mediation had vital power as long as 
it went along with the tendency to the positive which 



< J EN LEAL C HAKAC TEE OF THIS THEOLOGY. 2 € 1 

pervades this period of transition, just as a blossom has 
beauty and strength as long as it is the prospective fruit. 
But the blossoms of subjective efforts could not but fall 
off when the summer of the Church set in, just as the 
fruits of this summer will disappear when the Lord shall 
come to His harvest. From the schools of the mediating 
theologians there could not fail to proceed a theology for 
which the business of mediation was accomplished, a theo- 
logy which started from the positive. But these theolo- 
gians could not understand, and accommodate themselves 
to this natural course. The same theologians who for- 
merly, when assailed by Rationalism, had demanded a 
return to the positive, now uttered voices of warning 
against the sickly tendency of youth to the old, against 
the spirit of restoration which spread more and more 
alarmingly, — voices of warning which, even to single 
phrases and turns, agreed with those rationalistic ones. 
That was a new proof of the old truth, that be who does 
not advance recedes. In the mediation-theology, the two 
agents : the general — whether it was called reason (philo- 
sophy) or religious consciousness (Schleiermac7ier)—2LYi& the 
specifically Christian — whether it was determined as reve- 
lation or as the doctrine of the Church — were not truly 
united. The negative tendencies which proceeded from 
the schools of Hegel and Sclileiermacher made it manifest 
that this union was untenable. But the Lord caused 
these supports to be broken, in order that faith might 
begin to walk on its own feet. The love for the positive, 
more or less subjective and arbitrary, one might almost say 
that of a dilettante, must become a truth. When now that 
time of separation came, that "German theology"' imagined 
that a new mixture of rational and positive elements, in 
which each of them loses a little, was the remedy of the 
Church. It is mistaken; such mixtures will neither 



2C)2 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

stand the test of science, nor that of life. Ever since that 
separation took place, the tendency towards the Church 
became more and more powerful, and even that " German 
theology" could not resist it. Then an ecclesiastical form, 
which holds an infinitely elastic medium between old and 
modern, positive and subjective, viz.. the Union, offered 
itself to it. Of this we have now to speak in the last 
chapter, 



CHAPTER III. 



THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

The new life after the liberation-wars had a tendency 
towards the Church ; but it was nothing more than a 
tendency. To how very small an extent ecclesiastical 
consciousness was developed, is proved not only by the 
theology of this period, but also by the manner in which, 
at that time, in some Protestant countries, the Union 
of the Lutheran and Reformed churches was accom- 
plished. 

It was first carried in Nassau (1817). In the discus- 
sions, the confession of faith was only incidentally spoken 
of, but so much the more was said regarding the most 
external of the externals of the Church. The United 
Clergyman promised to "teach the Christian doctrine, 
according to the principles of the Evangelical Church, in 
such a manner as he himself, after honest inquiry, and 
according to the best of his convictions, draws it from 
Scripture." In Rhenish Bavaria, the Union was effected 



THE UNION. 283 

in 1818, with this declaration: "The Protestant Evan- 
gelico-Christian Church holds in due estimation the 
Catholic symbols, and the symbolical books used by the 
individual Protestant Churches, but does not acknow- 
ledge any other foundation of faith, nor rule of doctrine, 
except holy Scripture alone." In the deed of the Badish 
Union (1821), the Augsburg Confession and Heidelberg 
Catechism are acknowleged, as much and in so far as 
the right of free inquiry was claimed in the Augsburg 
Confession, and applied in the Heidelberg Catechism. 
In Rhenish Hessia (1822), the Union declared •'•' that the 
symbolical books, common to the two separated Churches, 
should in future also be the rule of teaching, with the 
exception of the doctrine on the Lord's Supper, contained 
therein, and on which they had hitherto differed." 

In his proclamation of the 27th September 1817, King 
Frederick William III. of Prussia, had distinctly stated 
the ground, way, and aim of the Union : — Ground : the 
two Churches are essentially one ; way ; from the senti- 
ments of the single individuals, the Union shall gain an 
ecclesiastical form ; aim : the two sister Churches, hitherto 
separated, are to unite into one national Church. While 
it is obvious and well known, that in Xassau, Baden, 
Palatinate, Rhenish Hesse, and Dessau, it was Rationalism 
and Indifferentism that spoke the decisive word at the 
introduction of the Union ; it may be said that Frederick 
William III., in the spirit of his ancestors, was anxious 
for the Union in an Evangelical sense, yea. even with a 
sense for the dignity, authority, and. institutions of the 
Church. Although, upon the whole, the theology of that- 
time was more advanced than the court theologians, 
Neander, 1 Fi/Iert, etc., who supported the king ; yet the 

1 Not the celebrated Church historian, but Bishop Xeander. 
— Th. 






264: THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

evangelical earnestness of Frederick William, his venera- 
tion for Luther, his love for the old ecclesiastical insti- 
tutions and forms of worship, still stood very much 
isolated. The king wished by no means to set aside the 
Confessions by the Union. On the 16th September 1822, 
he himself answered to Dean Michler in Brieg, who, in a 
direct address, had petitioned that His Majesty should 
ordain that the gospel alone was to be received and sworn 
to as the highest and only rule of faith : " It is true, that 
holy Scripture is the source of the Evangelical Confession 
of Faith, but it is so to the Greek and Roman Catholic 
Churches also, and to so many tolerated Christian sects. 
The Augsburg Confession, and the other symbolical 
books, generally received in the Evangelical Church, 
just contain that in which this Church differs from those 
other Churches ; and it is therefore, even for this reason, 
appropriate to impose upon the ministers of this Church 
the duty, not to disseminate by their teaching and preach- 
ing any other doctrine than that which is in harmony 
with holy Scripture, and the Evangelical Confession of 
Faith contained in it. and in the symbolical books. The 
exposition of holy Scripture is a particular branch of 
theological science ; but if those truths of our faith, 
which ought to stand immoveable, and ought to be held 
fast, were to be interpreted by every clergyman according 
to the measure of his ability for expounding, and if this, 
his individual interpretation, were, by means of teaching 
and preaching, to be transferred to the congregation — a 
thing which hitherto has been only too often done — then 
the substance of the truths of the evangelical faith could 
no longer stand unshaken. It is just in this interpreting 
that the origin of the sects is to be sought for, and it has, 
for this reason, been deemed necessary to limit all indivi- 
dual interpretation of Scripture — in so far as its spreading 



THE UXION IX PRUSSIA. 265 

in the congregation by means of teaching and preaching 
is concerned — by an obligation to the gospel, and, 
at the same time, to the symbolical books, as the 
authorities recognised in the Evangelical Church for 
three centuries. This arrangement will rather promote 
than impede the union of the Evangelical Confessions of 
Faith.'' This last sentence rather contrasts, by its am- 
biguous expression, with the noble assurance and confi- 
dence which pervade this royal letter. It is certain that 
when the king took the introductory steps towards the 
Union, he was not aware of the full importance of the 
Confession ; he did not perceive that it is not possible to 
declare the distinctive doctrines, which both the Confes- 
sions declare to be essential, to be unessential, without 
taking a position above the Confession, without criticising 
the Confession, without neutralizing the power of the 
Confession. It was impossible that he should overlook 
the fact, that the masses adhered to the Union, just be- 
cause in it they saw the barriers of the Confession falling. 
In a way not to be mistaken, that fact came out in the 
same year in the provincial synod of Breslau. There 
David Schulz and Colin put the question : ;, 'Is the synod 
resolved to acknowledge the symbolical books of the Evan- 
gelical Church, in so far as they agree with holy Scrip- 
ture, as witnesses for the above principle (viz. the sole 
authority of Scripture), for the actually accomplished 
purification of the Church, for the evangelical spirit 
which animated the Reformers, and not to remove from 
their principles and spirit?" They quickly obtained an 
affirmative answer. To the few who did not say. Yes, 
Scheihel belonged. His protest against the Union rested 
on the conviction, firm as a rock, that the Lutheran 
doctrine of the Lord's Supper alone was in accordance 
with Scripture ; but that the Reformed doctrine was an 



266 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

offspring of Rationalism. His own views of the Lord's 
Supper Scheibel declared in a sermon : " The Sacrificial 
Feast of the New Covenant" (1821). Then David Schuh 
stepped forth as the champion of the Union, in an anony- 
mous pamphlet : " Disorder in the Sanctuary ;" at the 
close of which he says : " Behold, then, this man, — this 
enemy to light and progress, — this dark ecclesiastical 
comet, which strives to raise itself into a new light of the 
world, and is thought to be so by a small number of 
weakly devotees, who are labouring under the spleen of 
the time, of mystified women and men seeking deliverance 
from a troubled tormented life, who allow themselves to 
be dragged along by its tail through all the errors of its 
perverse, unclean path of apocalyptic fancies, of unchris- 
tian absurdities, in superstitious, conceited folly, claiming 
to be the truth : — behold, and be startled." That which 
Scheibel had brought before his congregation in that 
sermon, he endeavoured to establish in a scientific mo- 
nograph (1823). Immediately after it appeared David 
Schulze's Treatise on the Lord's Supper, which, in conse- 
quence of the Rationalistic foundation on which it rests, 
could not miss the result of Zwingle, faithful to this 
model even to the bringing forward of the charge of 
cannibalism. Of course, this theology walked on the 
broad road of the masses. A number of the members of 
his congregation, however, Steffens among them, were 
gathering around Scheibel. After many wanderings of 
life, and aspirations, Steffens had been led back to the 
Confession of his fathers, by the earnest tendency of the 
time : and it was not his way to allow his experience and 
development to mature before he communicated them to 
the world. It was with shaking of their heads that his 
old friends from the time when he was an adherent of the 
Philosophy of nature, Romanticism, Germanism, and the 



THE UNION IN PRUSSIA. 267 

Theology of feeling, read " How Steffens again turned a 
Lutheran," and his passionate testimony " against the 
false theology," among which he reckoned the theology 
of his friend Schleiermacher. But this opposition was 
lost amidst the unanimous assent of theologians of every 
sect, who received the Union with shouts. 

Frederick William was less fortunate in his liturgical 
arrangements. His love for liturgical forms, together 
with a tendency to uniformity, peculiar to the princes of 
this house, had given rise in him to the thought of a 
liturgy for his whole kingdom, which was effectually to 
meet the arbitrariness and variety which had crept into 
public worship. The Liturgy of the court-chapel and 
cathedral-church (Hof-und Domagende), the chief author 
of which was the king himself, which was laid before the 
country for a trial, met with much opposition. The king 
convinced himself that he must pay greater deference to 
the provincial claims, but was determined to make use of 
his pretended liturgical rights. The bi-centenarian 
jubilee year of the presentation of the Augsburg Con- 
fession was fixed for the introduction of this Liturgy 
(Agende). The reception of the Liturgy was commanded, 
but that of the Union was arbitrary. That circle in 
Breslau, shortly before alluded to, refused to receive 
the Liturgy, because it stood in the service of the Union. 
Altogether apart from former declarations of the king, 
and the public confession of Eylert, this was indeed the 
case, and could not be denied, inasmuch as the Liturgy 
was intended for Lutheran as well as for Eeformed con- 
gregations ; and not to speak of other tributes which it 
paid to an age of transition, in the celebration of the 
Lord's Supper, it evidently assumed the Union. The 
protest against the Liturgy could not remain without 
consequences in the case of clergymen. Scheibel was 



268 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

deposed. And when pastor Rellner, a man of great 
popularity, and of remarkable energy, as a minister of 
another Church which alone existed according to law, re- 
fused to comply with the arrangement of an United Church 
authority, government interfered with military force, in 
order, of course, to conquer. It is certainly not only in 
accordance with the reverence due to crowned heads, but 
also with history, to judge of the king as leniently as 
possible. From the calumniatory character which Eylert 
has given of Scheibel, one may well infer how the king- 
was informed about the whole movement. It cannot be 
doubted, that he who instinctively hated every thing 
which had the appearance of revolution, looked upon this 
as the fruit, on the ecclesiastical territory, of the French 
July revolution. It escaped him that the Union was 
carried out in a way which was altogether unlawful, and 
was upheld by a party in the Church which stood much 
nearer to revolution than they did who adhered to the 
faith of their fathers. Through the atmosphere of am- 
biguous and violent theologians of the Union, and of a 
Minister who, when he wanted arguments, betook himself 
to the rude means of violence, of bureaucratic boards, etc. 
the thoughts of the king received so many earthly 
materials, that they fell heavily enough on the poor 
Lutherans. But among the darkest signs of that time 
is the circumstance, that men like Hahn and Olshausen 
took part against the Lutherans of Silesia. One cannot 
but call it a melancholy fact, that Hahn, who in Leipzig 
had advocated the right of the Church with the weapons 
of the Spirit, now stood in connection with the weapons of 
force ; this man of truly evangelical love and gentleness, 
with bayonets. Olshausen, well furnished with official facts, 
endeavoured with much ingenuity to point out the mistakes 
which the suppressed had committed in the form, without 



THE PRUSSIAN LUTHERANS. 269 

mentioning, even by a word, the camels which were 
swallowed by the other party, viz., the opinion that this 
Lutheran movement was merely the echo of a party long 
outlived, and altogether without claims, inasmuch as 
more than 7000 congregations stood against a few clergy- 
men. The king could not make up his mind to grant to 
the opponents of the Union the right of existing as a 
separate community. But they were so in fact. Scattered 
all over Prussia, they were and are a protest, in fact, 
against the Union, an awakening call to the faith of the 
fathers, a proof of the vital power of the Confession, per- 
haps the harbingers of future independence of the Church 
upon the State. At their head stands a man (HuschJce), 
who alone proves that God's spirit and gifts are with this 
community. In contrast with them, those of Lutheran 
tendencies who had remained in the National Church of 
Prussia, appealed to the Cabinet-order of 1834, which 
guaranteed, within the Union, the legal existence and 
authority of the Confession. But altogether apart from 
the little authority which Cabinet-orders have in matters 
of the Church, for every one who has yet a recollection of 
the Free one, which is the Mother of all, especially when 
these Cabinet-orders claim to be rules of faith, — the assur- 
ance that within the same National Church two contradic- 
tory Confessions have simultaneously a legal existence, bears 
within itself too evident a contradiction, to allow those who 
looked deeper to be at their ease. Under a consciousness of 
the acts of violence committed at the introduction of the 
Union, and of the claim which the adherents of a Confes- 
sion with so strong ecclesiastical supports might raise, 
of being at least allowed to exist, legal existence and re- 
cognition was secured, by the General Concession (1845), 
to the Lutherans who had seceded from the National 
Church. And theology, the chief prop of the Union, had 



270 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

meanwhile so far advanced, that it felt the contradiction 
in which a Church Community with a two-fold Confession 
stands to the Protestant principle, that the unity of the 
Church depends upon the unity of evangelical doctrine. 
That the consensus of the Union must have some sym- 
bolical expression, if the Union was to be maintained at 
all, they saw ; but how was it to be established ? One 
essential feature of the Confession of Faith in the 
Lutheran National Church is this — that it is the expres- 
sion of the ordination vow and engagement of clergymen ; 
but as to this ordination vow, matters were in a state of 
desolation in the Prussian National Church. It is ascer- 
tained, that at the same time when the Union was carried 
out (1830), such a vow and engagement were, in most 
congregations, altogether dispensed with. It was, there- 
fore, now the thought of the most eminent theologians of 
the Union (N'itzsch 9 Dorner, Muller, etc.), to carry through 
an ordination formula in which the consensus of the two 
Churches was to be contained, without taking from the 
individual congregation the right of giving a call on the 
ground of the particular Confessions. This was most 
dexterously planned, and altogether in the spirit of the 
Union. They had no confidence in the power of the 
Union to get up and introduce a Confession ; but to the 
opponents who, it was to be expected, would rise, they 
could reply, that an ordination formula is not a Confes- 
sion ; and yet it was to have a power which hitherto had 
essentially belonged to the Confession. To abolish the 
particular Confessions of the two Churches was what they 
neither would nor could do ; the individual congregations 
were at liberty to rejoice in them ; but the barrier of the 
ordination formula, which contained the profession of, 
and adherence to the Union, would be sure to prevent 
them from being carried away by their convictions beyond 



THOLXJCK. 271 

the limits of the Union. The principal task of the 
General Synod of 1846 consisted in carrying through this 
well-meditated plan ; but the ordination formula, which 
the mediating school produced — a wretched child of 
theology — was, by itself, rendered impracticable. And 
in this offspring the character of the mother herself came 
clearly out ; it was seen that the mediating theology was 
strong in criticising, weak in producing, incapable of ex- 
isting without the antagonistic principles which it im- 
agined it had overcome, and itself not holding the 
consensus on which it built the Union. 

At a time when this theology still claimed to be the 
victor, a school appeared which, in opposition to the pre- 
vailing science, and contemptuously looking down upon 
the coryphaei of this science, held that to love Christ was 
of greater value than all science. The most eloquent 
representative of this school was TholucJc. De TVette 
had made his doubter find reconciliation and consecration 
in a reanimated theology of feeling. To this Weike 
(consecration) Tholmk opposed "Die Wahre Weike" the 
true consecration of the new life proceeding from faith in 
the Saviour. This new life, which calls itself regenera- 
tion, indifferent to the i( pilgrim's dress of the Confession," 
not restricted as to doctrine by the faith of the Church, 
has a Pietistic character. Solitary in the present, it is in 
expectation of a victorious future. " Dearly beloved," 
says the patriarch of this new life to the consecrated one, 
" take thai which I am now to tell you as the legacy of 
an old man who is soon to part from the world, and who, 
before his departure, is anxious to deposit within the 
breast of many a young theologian who is called to stand 
in so great a time, that which the experience of a long life, 
and the extensive acquaintance with many thousands in 
different countries and ranks, have taught him. I there- 



272 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

fore tell to you. as one who will, perhaps, soon be in some 
University as one of the instruments of the great days 
which are in store for us : the work of the Spirit of God 

is, in these days, greater than you. than most people 
think. Yes ; a great resurrection morning is dawning : 
hundreds of youths are being awakened everywhere by 
the Spirit of God. Everywhere the converted ones enter 
into closer connections. Even science will become an 
handmaid and friend of the Crucified One. The author- 
ities, also, although as yet partly hostile to this great 
change, from fear that it might produce political conse- 
quences, favour it in many places : and where they do not. 
the power of light becomes so much the more manifest. 
Many enlightened ministers even now already proclaim the 
gospel in its power ; and many, as yet concealed, will come 
forth. I see the morning ; but the day mine eye will no 
more behold here, but from a higher place." This theo- 
logy is beyond the stand-point of mediation, for it draws 
from the new life in Christ ; and this life is its own evi- 
dence. But the endeavour to connect itself with every- 
thing induces it to enter with versatility and elasticity 
upon all the interests of science and life. For this busi- 
ness of spiritual exchange, an exposition of Scripture is 
suited, which, in an expert and skilful manner, changes 
the text into spirit and life, although not always into 
that which has produced the text. — Between Sclikier- 
mocker and Tholuek stands Neander. whose school Tholuck 
has never denied. Neander himself has professed the 
theology of the Christian Consciousness. " By this term 
is designated the power of the Christian faith in the sub- 
jective life of the single individual, in the congregation, 
and in the Church generally, a power independent, and 
ruling according to its own law, — that which according to 
the word of our Lord, must first form the leaven for every 



XEAXDER. 62 i 

other historical development of mankind." 1 When more 
clearly viewed, the Christian consciousness is only the 
form which Christianity has obtained in the heart. Pec- 
tus est quod facit theologum, is Neandef's watchword. 
With this principle, he knew himself to be in opposition 
to all the tendencies which were urging to objectivity in 
religion, whether they were philosophical or orthodox, or 
in general, formed in conformity with the Church. '•' I 
shall never cease to protest against the one-sided intellec- 
tualism, that fanaticism of understanding, which is spread- 
ing more and more, and which threatens to change man 
into an intelligent, over- wise beast. But, at the same 
time, I must protest against that tendency which would 
put a stop to the process of development of theology, 
which, in impatient haste, would anticipate its aim and 
goal, although with an enthusiasm for that which is raised 
above the change of the days, — an enthusiasm which com- 
mands all respect, and in which the hackneyed newspaper 
categories of 4 Progress and Retrogression' are out of the 
question. 5 ' 2 From his Christian consciousness Xeander 
saw. in the past history of the kingdom of God, a new and 
variegated life ; and it was his talent and his delight to 
follow the individual forms and expressions of it in diffe- 
rent ages. But both were wanting to him when the life 
of the Church condensed itself into objective forms. But 
that which, by means of his psychological Pragmatism, he 
could, to some extent, still be reconciled to, and sympathize 
with, in the history of the Church, he at last rejected with 
increasing bitterness, when it met him in life. The con- 
tradiction of the intolerance of tolerance, of the fanaticism 
of gentleness with which people forebore, in this noble 

1 Abhandlungen. S. 240. 

2 Preface to the €th Edition of the History of the Planting 
of the Apostolic Church, p. xiii. 

S 



274 THE CHURCH KENOVATHJG HEESELF. 

man. could not by any means be overlooked in the poor 
followers who afterwards represented this stand-point. 
Tholuck and Neander. raised above the theology of 
mediation by the energy of the Christian life, in which 
their theology rested, yet paid it their tribute in the sub- 
jectivity of their stand-point, and in the concessions which 
they made to modern science. From that Hengstenberg 
kept himself free. who, from the very outset, most em- 
phatically pointed to the firm prophetical word, to the 
objective rule of faith and life. While the mediating 
theology had given over to modern science, the old theory 
of inspiration, and. in history, admitted contradictions. 
even myths, — in doctrine, subjective elements. — and in the 
canon, spurious elements ; — Hengsienberg took upon him- 
self, with great ingenuity, the vindication of the most 
assailed writings and portions of the Old Testament, — 
pointed at and proved the supernatural christological 
contents in the prophetical books which had been natu- 
ralized by Rluminism. — developed, with ingenuity and 
intelligence, the meaning of the history and forms of the 
Old Testament dispensation, — and, with the anti-critical 
sword of the understanding in the one hand, and the 
building stones of the experience of the Church in the 
other, expounded the Old Testament books. The sum 
and substance of the divine word he found in the symbo- 
lical books of the two Confessions, which he found agree- 
ing in all essential points. With this conviction he joined 
the Union, although he belonged by birth to the Reform- 
ed Church, and had derived his theological education 
chiefly from Calvin. He looked down, as from a certain 
height, upon the Lutherans of Silesia struggling for the 
exclusively Lutheran Confession. Such was his stand- 
point. Never has Hengstenberg been afraid of the stigma 
of orthodoxy ; and it was never the wav of this high 



HEXGSTEXBERG-. 275 

principled manly theologian to coquet with the winds 
of the time. As long as he struggled with the narrow- 
minded men of Illuminism. his position was indeed much 
assailed, but internally strong ; but when he opposed the 
Lutheran movements, this man of the Church, standing 
as he did on the ground of the Union, seemed to be with- 
out a Church. However, the Evangeliscke Kirchenzeitung, 
edited by him, without doubt the ablest and most influen- 
tial ecclesiastical periodical of the present, shows a pro- 
gress from the undeveloped evangelical to the ecclesiasti- 
cal, with a tact which seizes wonderfully upon the signs of 
the time. While, at first, it was connected with positive 
tendencies of very different characters, the Halle contro- 
versy (1830), in consequence of which Neander and 
others withdrew from it, gave it a more distinct turn, 
until, in 1840, the preface, which demonstrated that Piet- 
ism was untenable, declared the internal separation from 
a party which, at first, had chiefly supported this organ. 
Even from the Union, Hengstenberg more and more 
alienated himself. While in 1S44 he had still declared 
that the Union could exist only if both of the Churches 
would relax in their Confessions, he declared in 1848 for 
Confederation as distinct from Union; and when this 
distinction soon became illusory, he declared for the neces- 
sity of a separate organization of both the Churches 
within the general framework of the National Church. 
And thus Hengstenberg has been raised by God to be, in 
a time of transition, a pioneer of the Church. 



A tendency, endowed with growing strength, found its 
expression in the theology of the new life. Everywhere 
in the congregations which, upon the whole, and generally, 
were under the sway of Rationalism and worldly-iniuded- 
ness, small crowds of faithful men were collecting, upon 



276 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

whom so-called public opinion looked down with contempt. 
What, at a former time, the Pietists had been charged 
with — weakness of mind and softness of disposition, reli- 
gious eccentricity, monkish seclusion from the world, pride 
in seeking to distinguish themselves from others, etc. — 
with all these things, an age that had gone through 
Illuminism upbraided these so-called " Peaceful ones in 
the land" in a still higher degree. There was a certain 
amount of truth in thus classing them with Pietism. As 
these believers did not lay so much stress upon the grace 
of God, which calls them through the word and sacrament, 
as upon the grace which converts them by special lead- 
ings of Providence, they rarely found in public worship 
what they were in search of, but in smaller devotional 
circles which were, in many instances, organized into con- 
venticles. The devotional books which prevailed there 
belonged chiefly to the Pietistic school. They knew 
themselves to be in the most cordial communion with the 
Moravian Brethren ; it was in their colonies that many 
found the communion of the children of light which would 
not appear in the State Churches. They paid little 
attention to doctrine and confession ; but life and works in 
the Spirit of Christ was everything to them. But in one 
aspect this Pietism was altogether different from that of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While the latter, an 
enfeebled ecclesiastical institution, was without theological 
power, and without any influence on a future renovation of 
the Church, the Pietistic fervour which prevailed in those 
circles was a life full of good hopes for the future, out of 
which very different tendencies developed themselves. 

It was in the retired circles of Pietism, that, through- 
out the eighteenth century, missions had been carried on. 
As long as the two Churches of the Reformation had still 
to struggle for their existence in Germany, the isolated 



missions. 277 

voices winch held forth the duty of offering the gospel to 
the Gentiles found only an indifferent hearing. Quite in 
keeping with the activity which, from the outset, was 
peculiar to the Reformed Church, a commencement of 
missionary activity manifested itself in those Calvinistic 
countries which held commercial intercourse with heathen 
countries, as in Holland, England, and Scotland. Then 
an important impulse proceeded from a Lutheran prince, 
Frederick IV. of Denmark, who thought that he was 
bound to offer the gospel to his heathen subjects. In 
connection with the Halle Waisenhaus (Orphan Institu- 
tion), he established a mission in the Danish colony of 
Tranquebar, in the land of the Tamuls. It was under 
him that Hans Egede went to Greenland, in order there 
to sow with tears where others were to reap with joy. It 
was under him that Thomas von Westen went to Lap- 
land, in order to kindle in that cold land a fire of love, 
which did not die with his premature death. In Ger- 
many, the Mission was in the hands of the Pietists. The 
care for the salvation of individual souls through loving 
faith in Jesus Christ, which was the vital point of Piet- 
ism, could not fail to extend to a care for the conversion 
of the heathen world, according to the word of our Lord : 
"^When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren/' 
Francke once said to a young theologian of his school : 
" If, in the Gentile world, one soul is in truth brought to 
God, this is as much as if a hundred were gained at home ; 
for the latter have daily means and opportunities suffi- 
cient for their conversion, while the latter lack these 
entirely." This word kindled in the soul of that youth, 
and became a fire which alighted with blessings on a 
heathen land. That youth was Ziegenbalg, the father of 
the mission in the land of the Tamuls. Pietism acquired 
an organic form in the community of the Moravian 



278 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

brethren ; and hence it was in the bosom of this commu- 
nity that the duty of missions was not only recognised, 
but made also a function of the ecclesiastical life of the 
community. Borne on the wings of a community which, 
in a time of general apostacy from the faith of the fathers, 
and of love generally waxing cold, preserved an ardent 
love for the Lord, the mission of the Moravian Brethren 
displayed, in a short time, in the snowy regions of Green- 
land and Labrador, as well as under the scorching rays of 
the sun in the West Indies, and among the degraded 
nations of the Cape of Good Hope, the same spirit of 
quiet pleading and seeking for the Crucified One, — a spirit 
which without intruding into the labours of others, over- 
came by the walk and conversation even without words,— 
which marked out for its aim not the masses, but single 
souls, and was, therefore, in earnest with conversion, and 
with the ordering of the life and conversation. To withhold 
from the Moravian Brethren the testimony of having done 
much for the kingdom of God, would be hardening our- 
selves against the truth. Like the community of the 
Moravian Brethren, so their mission also kept itself as 
free from the spirit of the age of Illuminism as it was 
conceivable ; while into the missionary field of the Halle 
Waisenhaus a shallow Doctrinalism entered, against which 
the abler missionaries, such as Gericke and John, pro- 
tested in vain (Fenger Gesch. d. Trankebarschen Mis- 
sion, S. 257, ff.). A cr ^ s i n * ne territory of missions 
took place in England in the last decades of the last 
century. Prepared by Methodism, challenged by the 
powerful impression of the French Revolution, an 
evangelical spirit awoke there, which, after the English 
mode, threw itself upon practical objects, and, among 
them, the conversion of the Gentiles and Jews. The 
London Missionary Society, which, consisting of the 



missions. 279 

children of God from among different denominations, 
would not spread Presbyterianism, or Independency, or 
Episcopacy, but the gospel of Christ, was the freshest 
expression of that spirit. The missionary tendency, 
spreading from England to Scotland, America^ Holland, 
and France, was taken up by German Protestantism also, 
when, after the liberation- wars, hearts had become sus- 
ceptible for works of faith. From beginnings, more or 
less small, arose the missionary societies of Basle (1815), 
Berlin (1833), Barmen (1828), Hamburg (1836, Nord- 
deutscher Verein), Dresden (1836, now Leipzig). In the 
ancient Church, the soil was so prepared, the spirit of 
testifying so powerful, that the extension of the Church 
was effected by the Church without any special organi- 
zation. In the beginning of the Church of the middle 
ages, single heroes went forth (Patricius, Bonifacins, 
Ansgar) to conquer kingdoms to the Lord; but in most 
cases conversions of the masses were effected by external 
means. From the bosom of the Komish Church, restor- 
ing herself in the face of Protestantism, missionary heroes 
again went forth, most of them belonging to the Society 
of the Jesuits. In such heroes the Protestant mission 
has not been wanting. But the extraordinary works 
which God effects by single selected individuals, do not 
exclude the ordinary ones. As in the organism of the 
Established Churches, which, upon the whole, were still 
suffering from the consequences of Illuminism, there was 
no room for missionary activity, it was carried out by 
free societies, which stood on the ground of a living faith 
in Jesus. It was on these missionary societies that the 
offence of the cross of Christ was lying ; but that was just 
the barrier which kept off infidelity and worldly-minded- 
ness from the mission; and the missionary societies, by 
throwing nets of associations over the Established Churches, 



280 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

became thus the rallying points of faith. The monthly 
missionary meetings existing over all the earth became 
meetings for the edification of the faithful. And the 
night which covered the heathen world preached repent- 
ance more powerfully than any sermons could do, while 
regeneration was preached by the new life arising, out of 
faith, on the dark ground of heathenism. Wherever the 
missionary cause took root in larger circles, the missionary 
festivals have become true popular festivals, in which the 
most beautiful motives of the Mediaeval Church — pil- 
grimages, processions, popular eloquence, etc. — were 
found again, cleansed and purified ; while, wherever they 
stood isolated, they have worked as awakening voices. 
With the consultations in the head-quarters of the mis- 
sions, consultations about Church affairs generally were 
naturally connected; — the Conferences which took place in 
Leipzig, in connection with the missionary festivals, have 
had the character of consulting assemblies in the affairs 
of the Lutheran Churches of Germany. Thus, the old 
National Churches were themselves built up while build- 
ing Churches in the heathen world. Those missionary 
societies which proceeded from the new life, after the liber- 
ation-wars, possessed the undecided character of it. The 
Basle Society especially, a true copy of the Established 
Church of Wurtemberg, most emphatically declared for 
the Union, 1 at a time when the movement was already 

1 Hoffmann, Die Ev. Missionsyesellschaftin Basel im J. 1842, S. 
36, XXI. : — " The Basle Society has, from its beginning, believed 
that the division of the Evangelical Church into different forms 
of Confessions is a consequence of human imperfection, and 
that none of these forms of Confessions is eternal, but that 
all of them are transient ; that none has the truth alone and 
throughout, but that they all supplement one another. As a 
missionary society, it declares its belief in the word of God, 
or in that which is common to all the Evangelical Protestant 
Churches." 



MISSIONS. 281 

tending towards the Lutheran Church. In Prussia, the 
contrarieties of the Union without a Confession, and of the 
Union seeking a Confession, were transferred to the mis- 
sion also. When the Hamburg Society was being formed, 
and about to express its Union-character, powerful voices 
were raised for the necessity of carrying on the missions 
in connection with the Church. The Leipzig Society, 
which labours on the missionary field, which the Danish 
Crown has founded in connection with the Halle Waisen- 
haus, on the field of Ziegenbalg, Schultze, Schwarz, stands 
decidedly on the ground of the Evangelical Lutheran 
Confession, and is the only work carried on in common 
by the Lutheran Established Churches of Germany and 
the North. The more that the mission will see that its 
duty is not only to save single souls, but to build up 
Churches, the more it will become an affair of the Church. 
An argument which was again and again urged against 
these missions, was the fact, that at home there were so 
many heathens still to be converted. It was not this 
argument, but the fact to which it pointed, that was suffi- 
ciently well founded. During almost the greater portion 
of the seventeenth century, in all the evangelical coun- 
tries of Germany, from the prince down to the beggar, 
it was thought to be of paramount necessity to know in 
whom one believed, and to walk according to this faith. 
In the houses, Bible and hymn-book were the first and the 
last, the most faithful advisers in all the events of life, a 
rod and staff on the path of tribulation and death. In 
the higher, as well as in the elementary schools, the Con- 
fession of the fathers was considered as the chief know- 
ledge ; to be regular in attending the house of the Lord, 
and in coming to the table of the Lord, formed part of 
the family honour. All the ordinances of rank, of law, 
of the State, were connected with religion. The minister- 



282 THE CHUECH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

ial order could, with the word of God. reprove delin- 
quencies with which no human candour could venture to 
deal. In short, religion was the rule of domestic and 
public life. But since the Westphalian peace, we see this 
power of religion over life disappearing more and more. 
In the higher classes, ostentatious worldliness, refined 
love of pleasure, and frivolity, were introduced from 
France. In the middle and lower classes, the pious tra- 
dition was still preserved, down to the middle of the 
eighteenth century ; hut life withdrew itself more and 
more from its regulations and forms. Pietism, called 
forth by a reaction against an externalized Churchism, 
gave up the masses in order to deliver up the future of the 
kingdom of God to a small remnant, to a little Church of 
the regenerate. The circumstance, that henceforth, as we 
saw, the disciples of the living faith in Christ Jesus were 
called Pietists, had its foundation in the fact, that the 
religious life had lost its substantially working power by 
which it governs the masses, and penetrates the world, 
and had, instead of it, become the affair of single indivi- 
duals. During the age of liluminism. we likewise saw 
that it formed a part of education to be rationalistic in 
religion, humanistic in social life, and to think according 
to the rules of utility in the ordinary calling. In contrast- 
to the excesses of Illuminism in France, the German 
sought honour in keeping a medium. *'•' To whom," says 
Sckleierm acker, in his discourses on religion, " to whom 
shall I address myself, but to the sons of Germany ? It 
is only here, in our fatherland, that there is the happy 
climate which does not altogether refuse any fruit : here 
you find everything, though scattered only, which adorns 
mankind ; and everything which thrives is somewhere, at 
least in isolated cases, developed into its most beautiful 
forms ; here, neither wise moderation^ nor quiet contem- 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITION. 283 

plation, is wanting." This moderation had, indeed, often 
the character of petty formalism. It is true that, after 
the liberation-wars, a better, deeper, and more serious 
spirit pervaded the people ; and it had the appearance as 
if religion was again to enter into the number of world- 
ruling powers, yea, as if it were to become the first power. 
But it soon became manifest that it was in single indi- 
duals only that the new life advanced into a living faith 
in Jesus Christ, while, in the middle classes of the edu- 
cated world, the views of Illuminism continued to prevail. 
In addition to this, there came the political dissatisfac- 
tion which, during the period of the Restoration, seized 
a great portion of the nation. The so-called Pietism was 
seen in the company of Absolutism, of a violent restora- 
tion of old things, of a tendency opposing the march of 
intellect. Wheresoever, therefore, there arose conflicts 
between the representatives of the so-called Pietism and 
the theology of Illuminism, the mass of the educated 
were throughout on the side of the latter party. Libe- 
ralism and Rationalism naturally supported one another. 
The fall of the kingdom of the Restoration in France, 
by means of the July Revolution (1830), was therefore a 
triumph for the Rationalism of the bourgeoisie. The July 
kingdom, with its juste milieu between monarchy and 
revolution, its bankers' wisdom, its calculated religious- 
ness, — this kingdom of the bourgeoisie, was exactly 
the expression and support of that moderate progress 
which those of an average education in Europe wanted. 
Wherever, therefore, in Germany, the July movement 
was victorious, Liberalism and Rationalism appeared as the 
leaders. Prussia kept herself free from this movement. 
When, after his accession to the throne, Frederick Wil- 
liam IV. declared that he did not wish for a constitution 
after the French fashion, and, in word and deed, professed 



284 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

his adherence to the Christian spirit which, after the 
liberation-wars, had found its head-quarters in Prussia, 
then Rationalism, although conquered in the territory of 
theology, gained, in those middle classes of the educated, 
a new power, by becoming an element of opposition. It 
is only in this way that we can account for the agitation 
which was called forth in Germany by the " Friends of 
Light," by the German Catholics, and by the Protest- 
agitation. 1 Religious opposition went hand in hand with 
the political. To suspect after-thoughts in all the mea- 
sures of government, constituted the ingenuity of Liberal- 
ism, — to shake all the barriers, its art, — to overthrow 
ministries, its heroism. But, with all that, it was of 
opinion that the opposition must keep within bounds, — 
that it must never meddle with the laws which protected 
the claims of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie was con- 
servative, as far as the conservation of themselves and 
their interests was concerned. These interests were sub- 
stantially of a materialistic kind. To promote traffic 
and intercourse by means of railways and steam-engines, 
to outbid invention by invention, to supersede human 
powers by means of machinery, to make the most of poli- 
tical combinations for mercantile purposes, to open up 
new mercantile connections, — these were the interests 
which here domineered over everything. How entirely 
different from this bourgeoisie was the civic class of the 
good olden time,— -truly and rightly called thus from this 
point of view ! Then the profession was still subservient 
to the moral relations of the citizen. To be the head of 
a family of good name, member of a respected class 
citizen of a town to which he adhered in joy and in sor- 
row, above all, to be a good Christian, — these were the 

1 Striking views of the causes of these movements are given 
by Hundeshagen in " Der Deutsche Protesiantismus"* (1847). 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITION. 265 

objects at which a citizen of that time aimed. What our 
modern citizen aims at as the highest good is gain. Where 
all are runniDg to such a goal, each individual must be- 
take himself to the most refined means. In this haste 
of competition outbidding one another, the modern citi- 
zen has neither time, nor rest, nor opportunity, to feel 
himself to be a man and a Christian, to allow himself to 
be led by moral and religious motives. The single indi- 
vidual does not feel as a head of a family, as a member 
of a corporation and community, but as such and such a 
clever man, who has obtained such and such a fortune. 
This natural egotism saps and destroys all the moral ties 
by which the civic life of the fathers was held. And what 
did the single individuals obtain by this running and over- 
throwing of those moral orders ? Education and enjoyment. 
Education is the aggregate of knowledge, of rules of 
life, of interests on which the intercourse of the world 
depends. The Spirit as rector of education is the spirit 
of the time : and the ideal of education is to be a man 
fitted for higher society, a fashionable man. Education 
is the modern knighthood. As yet, there was still no- 
bility that had come down from the middle age. But 
that which constituted the mediaeval nobi.ity, viz., descent 
from an ancient noble family, landed property, the right 
of being a member of the Diet, to behave as a gentle- 
man in worldly affairs, — all that had been very much 
sapped and destroyed by the spirit of the time. Many of 
the nobility, forced by external circumstances, had lost 
themselves among the people ; while, on the other hand, 
many, by their merits, had been raised to nobility from 
the rank of commoners. More than half of the landed 
property had in many countries passed into the hands of 
commoners. And even landed proprietors of the nobility 
displayed on their estates a wisdom in farming and manu- 



286 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

facturing, which certainly was often rather common. 
That, however, which, more than any thing, did away 
with the difference between nobility and bourgeoisie, was 
education. Nevertheless it is certain, that there has been 
preserved among the nobility a historic spirit, a gift of 
personal representation, a simplicity of surrender to the 
purely human relation by means of which they are raised 
above the refined business life, and a poetry of life which 
even the world of authors involuntarily acknowledge by 
their fondness for making their heroes members of this 
class. But this education penetrated even to the lowest 
strata of society. The class of those old, solid, pious- 
farmers, faithful to their pastoral traditions, gave way to 
agriculturists who cultivated their farms in a rational 
way. with all the claims and wants of modern education. 
On the ruins of the old organically and originally formed 
relations of life, education thus reared a uniform empire of 
a bourgeoisie feeding upon the progress of the time. In this 
kingdom of education, religion had an altogether subor- 
dinate position. By Illuminism, people had been estranged 
from the faith of their fathers ; and to return to it was 
against the laws of progress. Moreover, the Rationalists 
had succeeded in making the conviction general, that the 
faith of the Church was irreconcileable with the intelli- 
gence of modern times,— and intelligence was the highest 
court of appeal for education. It is true, however, that a 
great number of these educated people, who would never 
have pardoned themselves for not knowing an event of 
the day, or some celebrated literary phenomenon, were in 
absolute ignorance of that about which Christianity treats. 
Thousands of our educated men have no answer to the 
question : " What must I do that I may inherit eternal 
life?" While, at one time, the knowledge of salvation 
was considered as the science of all sciences, it now forms 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITION". 287 

part of the character of an educated man to know of 
everything in the world except that which the Lord of 
the Universe has revealed. In the home of the educated, 
family worship, bringing up of the children in the fear 
and admonition of the Lord, grace before meals, searching 
of the Scriptures, etc., are, as a rule, out of the question. 
If, according to the oft-repeated words of Cicero, no 
people is so uncivilized as not to have religion, there is, 
on the other hand, no people so civilized as to be able to 
do altogether without religion. The educated man of our 
time looks upon religion as a private concern, in which 
every one does as he can and wills. And thus it is even 
considered as a sign of religion, if an individual only takes 
the trouble of forming an opinion on religion ; and it is 
regarded as a sign of special depth, if, from his experi- 
ence, reading, and fancies, he sets up an opinion of his 
own. Wherever religion ventures to appeal to heavenly 
necessity, and to administer law and discipline in life, there 
the educated world sees night, slavery, oppression of con- 
science, etc., breaking in. For over his intelligence and 
liberty, our man of education watches with a jealousy which 
forms a strange contradiction to his phrases about the 
irresistible conquering power of the spirit. — The dark side 
of our modern educated world is formed by the Prole- 
taries. There have always been poor; but the enormous 
mass of bodily and spiritual destitution belongs to our time 
only, nor are the reasons of it so very far out of the way. 
With all educated people, having wants winch are ever 
increasing, industry becomes, of course, more and more 
refined, and hence the mass wanting in skill and industry 
larger and larger. By the factory system of our time, by 
the application of machinery, masses of our labourers are 
rendered superfluous, while other masses find transitory 
employment only, and are then again given up to chance. 



288 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

The solid middle classes are more and more disappearing. 
To this we must add the concubinage and prostitution 
which are spreading more and more widely. There are 
capitals in Germany in which the half of the new-born 
are illegitimate. That these will, to a great extent, be- 
come Proletaries, is obvious. The number of children 
who grow up without instruction and education, like the 
beasts of the field, is astonishingly large, even in the best 
educated countries. Who then will wonder at the num- 
ber of young criminals ? Many thousands live by crime, 
prostitution, theft, fraud, etc. ; others trust altogether to 
chance. With these masses of Proletaries it might hap- 
pen, at a time which viewed everything from principles,, 
that this state of distress and destitution was made a 
virtue of: and emancipation from all laws of morality, 
atheism, and red republicanism, with community of goods 
and women, were, indeed, systematically taught and main- 
tained. The bourgeoisie, for the sake of self-preservation, 
put a limit to the political and religious Liberalism ; but 
the Proletaries, in their state of dissolution, had no reason 
for doing so. Nor did they want intellectual protectors. 
These were the Literati, the Proletaries, in the kingdom 
of mind. These Literati — most of them men who, in 
the superficial versatility of their aspirations, thought 
themselves too good for the narrowness of some parti- 
cular science, or too important for labouring in the sweat 
of their brows in some office, and had therefore assumed 
to be the leaders and spokesmen of mankind in their 
most important affairs, to be the organs of the spirit of 
the time, to be representatives of intelligence without a 
moral foundation — instinctively worked into the hands of 
dissolution. It was out of the midst of the body of these 
Literati that, in the fourth decade, the Romanticism of 
Young Germany proceeded. More than of the literature 



THE LITERATI. 289 

of any other nation is it characteristic of the German, to 
connect genial creative power with the reflecting, critical, 
theoretical consciousness. One might be disposed to 
believe that Shakspeares genius could not have existed 
with a versatility of scientific aspirations such as we find 
in Goethe. The fundamental fault in Schiller's poetry 
is, no doubt, the prevalence of reflection. We saw that 
the Romanticism of Tied', Sehlegel, and others, never 
brought forth any true creation, just because it was too 
much in the service of a theory (see p. 202-3). The more 
that the directly working genius became extinct, the 
more the theory became elastic, one might say poetic. 
Thus then it was that there arose that Literati-Roman- 
ticism, the poetries of winch were properly revised reflec- 
tions, elegant and ingenious in characterizing, but, not- 
withstanding all the brilliancy of style and glitter of 
refined wit, powerless in producing. This Romanticism 
fascinated, by its reflections, the thinking Germans ; by 
its pungent turns, a generation blase, and requiring ner- 
vous excitement : by its giving vent to a licentious 
carnal mind, the carnal mass. By the boldness of its 
mental leaps, by its daring attack on everything existing 
in State and Church, it broke through the barriers of the 
wisdom of the bourgeoisie* It announced a world gone 
mad in Pantheism. On a soil thus prepared by this 
Romanticism were cast the views of Strauss. Feuerbach, 
Rvge, VisJier, and others, who, after having attempted in 
vain to carry through in theory their principles, at last 
likewise betook themselves to the means of these Literati. 
When then, in 1848, the July King fell, the head of the 
bourgeoisie, the moment appeared to be favourable in 
Germany for carrying through the ideals of the liberal 
bourgeoisie, such as — Unity of Germany, a Constitution 
on the broadest foundation, the arming of the people, a 

T 



290 THE CHUIICH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

free press, etc. But very soon this Liberalism saw itself 
outflanked by the leaders and spokesmen of Republican- 
ism, who had the unchained masses at their disposal. 
Just as powerlessly as formerly, in Theology, Rationalism 
had stood over against the criticism of Pantheism, did 
Liberalism now stand at the abyss of the Socialistic 
republic, which threatened to swallow up not only the 
Throne and Church, but the bourgeoisie also. As yet, 
this abyss has been again closed ; but whether Liberalism 
has been benefited by the lesson, is the question. 

Against this so powerfully spreading corruption, the 
ordinary means of the Church seemed to be insufficient ; 
it was only a union en masse of all those who stood in 
the faith which seemed to be able to cope with this cor- 
ruption of the mass of the people. This endeavour called 
itself Inner Mission, because, as distinct from the Foreign 
Mission, it has to do with the heathenism within the 
Church. 1 Even this definition, however, is still too wide, 
The aim and object of the Inner Mission is, by means of 
free societies, to gain back to the Gospel the unchristian- 
ized people. 2 The Inner Mission opens to children, to 
whom the parents cannot devote the necessary care and 
attention, its infant-schools and nurseries; to destitute 

1 From the state of things in Germany, Church can here 
mean the Established Churches only. — Tr. 

2 In determining what Inner Mission means, much doubt and 
uncertainty prevail, as Lindner, " Martha nnd Maria? S. 13, 
shows : " It is all that in Christendom is done for elevating the 
masses, within the pale of the Church, from their destitution and 
corruption by united efforts, especially in the form of societies, 
without being guided by the ministerial office. Its substance, 
Christian love proceeding from faith, and manifesting itself in 
mercy towards the brethren, is as old as the Church herself; 
but its form, that of an association, is a new one, which arose 
only a short time ago, and is now striving for a more perfect 
organization " (S s 18). 



INNER MISSION. 291 

and demoralized children, its asylums and reformatory 
schools ; and takes care of the spiritual and temporal 
improvement of the adults, in Sunday Schools and Young 
Mens' Associations. It takes care of the poor in relief- 
associations, which not only support, but also watch over 
the bodily and spiritual welfare of their charge. It 
nurses the sick ; gets up healthy and cheap lodgings ; 
increases, in savings' banks, the mite of the poor ; seeks^ 
by the power of communion, to educate the intemperate 
to renunciation ; penetrates into the gaols of the criminals, 
and takes care of those who have been dismissed ; circu- 
lates Bibles and Christian books, for awakening Christian 
faith and love, and seeks to make the Sunday again a 
Sabbath, a day of rest and of elevation to the Lord. It 
takes care of prostitute girls; descends, reproving and 
helping, into the abodes of filth; offers to the travel- 
ling journeymen 1 places of spiritual recreation; brings 
the Word of God to the crowds of labourers who do 
not find time to take care of their souls ; endeavours 
to strengthen destitute and sunken congregations, by 
itinerant preachers ; educates nurses, who not only attend 
to the bodies, but also to the souls of the sick, etc. At 
the head of these efforts for elevating the bodily and 
spiritual pressure which bears upon the Christian people, 
Wichern placed himself, — a man of unflinching energy, 
rich experience in the abodes of misery, and of great 
talent for organization. At a time when the German 
States were threatening to succumb to the outbreaks of a 

1 By the laws of Germany, journeymen are obliged to be 
abroad for a period of at least three years, in order to improve 
in their respective trades. The young men, with knap-sacks 
on their backs, whom one meets with on every road in Germany, 
belong to this class. It needs scarcely be said that during the 
time of their journeying, they are exposed to hardships and 
temptations of every kind.— Tr. 



292 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

wild popular fury (September 1848), he unrolled before a 
large meeting at Wittenberg, -which had been gathered 
together by solicitude for the existence of the Evangelical 
Church, a picture of the spiritual destitution and corrup- 
tion of the people ;■ — and the moment had come when the 
labours of saving love could be systematically organized. 
The care of the poor does not need any vindication ; it is 
as old as the Church. That which belonged to modern 
time was the form of activity by means of associations ; 
but even that existed long before the name of Inner Mis- 
sion was mentioned. That which was really new was the 
comprehending of all efforts of this kind into an organized 
whole. This organized mass seemed to be demanded by 
the organized masses of the enemy. 1 Very well founded 
objections, however, were raised against this organizing 
of associations. A large community had been formed for 
the salvation of the poor, without any organic connection 
with that society for the salvation of mankind which 
God himself has founded through Jesus Christ, viz., the 
Church. The existence, by the side of the Church, of 
a community which ascribed to itself effects that belonged 
to the Church only, was not justified by appealing to the 
general priesthood, by an assurance that there was no 
intention of encroaching upon the ministerial office, by 
asserting that they would keep within the bounds of the 
Evangelical Confession (i.e., of the Union), etc. If the 
existing means of the Church were not adequate to the 
wants of the time, it was not a new building which was 

1 Wichem, Die innere Mission, S. 16. " The object of this or- 
ganization can be none other than that the general corruption 
over-growing the congregations, and pervading the whole 
Church, may be met by a religious elevation as Catholic and 
Evangelical, as organized, as a free congregation of God, with 
the message and offer of salvation, wherever and in what man- 
ner soe.er it is required." 



INNER MISSION. 293 

required, but a strengthening and enlargement of the 
walls on the foundation laid by God, the foundation of 
the Prophets and Apostles, of which Christ is the corner- 
stone. To this, it may still be added that, in order to have 
large masses and means at their disposal, they had to 
make some allowance as to the evangelical character of the 
individual members and associations. Although a num- 
ber of existing associations of this kind were united for 
the work of the Inner Mission, they were, thereby, not 
yet brought under the Gospel. Not a few have come 
forward as labourers in the work of the Inner Mission, 
who should rather have been the objects of it. Even in 
enthusiastic vindications of the Inner Mission, there is a 
confused mingling together of Humanism and Christian- 
ity. 1 And then this Pelagian confidence in the power of 
outward means ! The centre of Christianity is the salva- 
tion of the single individual soul by faith in Jesus Christ. 
Where there is nothing of the heart of the Shepherd going 
after the single sheep in the wilderness, there is no saving 
love, in the sense of Christ. The Inner Mission means to 
be able to overcome the masses by masses, — by the mass 
of distributed Bibles, scattered tracts, established asylums, 
and institutions for the destitute and demoralized, etc. 
To exhibit their good works, in boasting numbers, such as is 
done in the so-called meetings of the Kirchentag, agrees ill 
with the word of the Lord about that doing with the right 
hand of which the left is not to know anything. There 

1 Braune, Unsere Zeit u. die inner e Mission, marks (S. 86), as 
the fundamental thought of the Inner Mission, the idea of 
Humanism which loves, in man, the image of God, and is rooted 
in, and grounded on the faith of Jesus Christ, the express image 
of God, the man as he is to be, the person in which man's nature 
attains to full maturity. " His (Christ's) mercy has anew re- 
vived in it (the Inner Mission). Humanism and Christianity 
are by it comprehended in one " (S. 91). 



294 THE CHURCH RENOVATIKG HERSELF, 

was and is much show and mere appearance in these 
associations. As one of our pc 
poems he had delivered himself of mental mat 
pressed upon him. so associations, with their 

anism. are, for many, a means of discharging 
duties iu an outward form. Yet those and other 
tions are not directed against the matter : 
against the form only. It is not probable that this form 
will stand for any length of time, perhaps, only 
Church is stirred up to produce, out of herself, or at 
least organically to connect with herself, all these e 3 
for the salvation of mankind. 1 

1 In readiDg the above views on the Inner Mission, the It 
will MndJy bear in mind the fact, that by tl 
the Roman Catholic. Luthe 

obtained a legal standing in Germany, are the e 
Churches of Germany. Non- conformity is as yd an ". . . 
known thing:. Thee: ptists, 

who. np to this day. are persecuted in m . i r f i : 5 ; : G e : m a 
have only of late obtained a legal stai In the 

mouth of a Lutheran, Church. : 

Church. Our author, moreover, belongs, aswc m ive, 

to the High Church section of that denomination, who, in : _ 
vie^s on the Church and the sacramei" : - 

and consubstantiation), come pretty near the Pas fine 

Anglican Church. That such cannot look witl able 

eye on such efforts as those of the In: ne will 

easily understand. Our author's evangel tents how- 

ever, are too strong" to allow him to deny air:, :: essity 

of such efforts, and the good accomplished by tl ssion. 

As regards his objections, the; Istreng fch : the 

missionary efforts and associations, of which he spoke on a 
previous occasior ; but then he lid u :: nrge : m \ pi >bab]y be- 
cause the objects of those efforts, bei away ?atbens, 
did not come home as a charge and reproof : : 3 Chin ehes, in 
such a manner as the Inner Mission must necessarily 1c 
Moreover, the Ktfckattag, from the very outset, wished t : I e 
nothing else than a handmaid and helper : the Chinch. lis 
independent position was forced upon it by the apathy and in- 
activity of the Established C i again are the : rase- 



CURE OF SOULS. 295 

The Inner Mission seeks to reclaim the unchristianized 
Proletaries ; but the world of the educated was no less 
unchristianized. To influence them appeared to be the 
God-given duty of that order which has to watch for 
souls. What could be obtained by means of a cure of 
souls, was proved by shining instances in England and 
Scotland. In some parts of Germany also, in which there 
is Christian life, e.g., in Wiirternberg, in the Wupper- 
Valley. a lively practice prevailed. It was chiefly in the 
country that the ministers had remained pastors : in the 
towns, the ministers ordinarily did nothing except preach 
and perform the official acts and duties incumbent upon 
them. The higher clergy were, for the most part, em- 
ployed to such a degree by the bureaucratic business 
transactions of the outward Church, that very little time 
was left to them for exercising a free influence upon the 
souls of their parishioners ; and that so much the more, 
that in large places the parishes were generally so exten- 
sive, as to make a regular cure of souls impossible. 
What could a pastor, in a parish of twenty thousand souls, 
do ? In the larger places, the number of the inhabitants 
had increased exceedingly, and, along with that, wants of 
every description : but a want of additional churches was 

quences, partly of a want of life, and partly of strange doctrinal 
views, on the part of the leaders, but chiefly of their connection 
with the State, by which their freedom of action is circum- 
scribed within rather narrow limits. The Kircheniag has re- 
peatedly expressed its sorrow at being forced into this inde- 
pendent position, but confidently expects, that the time will 
come, when the Church shall herself take up and carry on the 
work of the Inner Mission. The mission of the Kirclientag would 
then be accomplished, and it would hail the moment when it 
could give up its commission into the hands of the ordinary 
Church- Courts. As regards the special charge of the indiffer- 
ence of the Kircheniag to the confessions of the Church, the 
Kircheniag at Berlin (1853), unanimously declared the Augs- 
burg Confession to be their Confession.— Te. 



296 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

rarely felt ; yea, even in the churches, which at one time 
had not been sufficient, there was at present abundance 
of room. In the city of Berlin, with 400,000 inhabitants, 
not many more than 20,000 are supposed to attend 
church. It was now, especially in Prussia, that the ques- 
tion was taken into serious consideration, as to how the 
cure of souls could be renewed, and the number and 
influence of the clergy could be increased. Of course, 
commanding was here out of the question ; all that could 
be done was to remind, and to stir up. The king, by 
a committee of clergymen, caused experiences to be 
gathered in Great Britain, and the attention of the 
ministers to be very specially directed to this point, in 
the district-synods of 1843. A Pastoral Assistant Society, 
originated and directed by Otto von Gerlach, was formed 
in Berlin. Several new churches also have been built 
there, since that stimulus was given. It could scarcely be 
otherwise, than that many faithful ministers, in their zeal, 
proceeded in an immature, indelicate manner, yea, even 
with spiritless bluntness ; yet such mistakes could not 
conceal the necessity of the case. The circumstance 
which caused the greatest difficulty was the isolated 
position of the clergymen in their congregations. If 
clergymen, so people argued, were assisted by like-minded 
laymen, the pressure of the burden imposed upon them 
would be distributed and diminished, while their strength 
would be increased. In such a position, many gifts and 
graces which now are unemployed, or seek an outlet in a 
wrong direction, would find a corresponding sphere of 
action. But for such an increase of ministerial strength, 
the organism of the constitution of the Church, had no 
room. Hence the cause of the cure of souls was trans- 
ferred to the question on the Constitution of the CJvurch 
which already, in large circles, occupied attention. 



CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 297 

That the constitution of the Protestant Church of 
Germany required revision, was said and admitted by 
very different parties. They pointed to the hampering 
dependence upon the State, to the bureaucratic character 
of the Consistories, to the entire passiveness of the con- 
gregations, to the want of synodical life, to the separation 
of the Protestant Church into individual National 
Churches, without any organic ties of connection, A 
historical party, looking to the institutions of the primi- 
tive Church, and coquetting with Romanism, beheld in 
Episcopacy the absolute foundation of every church-con- 
stitution ; while a liberal party insisted on a Presbyterial 
and Synodical constitution. When by the joint efforts of 
the Anglican State Church, and of the Prussian National 
Church, the bishopric of St James was established on 
Mount Zion, this was looked upon as a demonstration for 
the Evangelical Church of the West. The declaration of 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, that this work might be 
the beginning of a lasting connection between the An- 
glican Church and the Evangelical Church of the Con- 
tinent, enjoying a less excellent constitution, seemed to 
prove that. If any such views ever prevailed, there was 
the least favourable period for them at that time, when 
public opinion was agitated and excited by fears of 
hierarchy, Byzantinism, religious edicts, etc. In general, 
German Protestanism would, at that time, not learn 
from English Protestantism, which, as a distinguished 
theologian of the Union demonstrated, in its narrow- 
mindedness and self-sufficiency did not know anything 
except to condemn other Churches, while, in consequence 
of its hierarchical dispositions, it would still fall into the 
hands of Rome. The same theologian of the Union pro- 
tested against a Union with the Anglican State Church. 
While this ecclesiastical Liberalism protested against 



298 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

Episcopacy, because it saw its introduction in the hand of 
absolutistic tendencies, it did not in the least conceal with 
what tendencies its own demands for a representative 
constitution for the Church were connected, " Even this 
circumstance," says Heirless, " that men of a decidedly 
radical disposition insist upon synods, and demand that 
not clergymen alone should be members, but laymen 
also, and so that the latter shall be the majority. — even 
this circumstance should exhort us to be cautious. For 
have we not been compelled to hear this demand made 
by thorough infidels, on the ground of the general priest- 
hood, of which they claim to be members ? It is only 
too plain what it is that these people intend. He who 
has, only to some degree, followed Rouge's triumphal 
procession from the Polish frontier to the Rhine, — he who 
knows the meetings of the i Friends of Light'" from among 
all Confessions, their public dinners and toasts. — he who has 
read their so-called Confessions of Faith, their addresses, 
and other pamphlets ; — what is he to think of the general 
priesthood in our poor people not consecrated, but dese- 
crated in whole masses ? In the deepest sleep of con- 
science, these dreamers cry for liberty of conscience : men 
who do not know the Shorter Catechism, nor the Ten 
Commandments, demand liberty of inquiry in Holy 
Scripture, insist upon the abolition of the symbols, which 
they declare to be man's work, and to which they will 
not be bound. That pretended general priesthood, which 
would like to force its way into the synods, and, if possible, 
to set aside Christianity altogether, makes us most pain- 
fully to feel the fearful apostasy of so many." The 
Mediating Theology here, too, proposed a middle course. 
It would not sever the connection between Church and 
State*: the prince was to retain his privileged position, 
but State influence and bureaucracy were to be done 



GrSTATTS ADOLPHI'S ASSOCIATION. 299 

away with ; with a regenerated consistorial constitution, 
a presbyterial and synodical constitution, secured against 
all excesses, was to be connected. As the most objective 
expression of that which this party wished, the opinion of 
the Constitution-Committee of the Prussian General 
Synod may be regarded. 1 The desires for an organic 
union of the Protestant Established Churches of Ger- 
many made a start from below, in the Gustavus Adolphus 
Association ; from above, in the Conference, which, in 
the beginning of the year 1846, met in Berlin. The 
latter was a feeble diplomatic echo of the feeble Corpus 
Evangelicerum, which soon vanished ; but a greater sen- 
sation was produced by the Gustavus Adolphus Associa- 
tion. It originated in the thought of raising a living 
monument to the heroic king of Protestantism, by a 
union of Protestants, for the support of Protestant con- 
gregations scattered in Roman Catholic countries, and 
arose from the combination of an institution already 
existing in Saxony, with means which a proclamation of 
Zimmermann, in Darmstadt (1841), set in motion, and 
was soon viewed as a representation of Protestantism on 
the basis of love, as faith had lost its connecting power. 2 
By this tendency, the confidence of those holding stricter 
views of the Church and her Confessions, was withdrawn 
from the Gustavus Adolphus Association, although the 
real object of it was praiseworthy. Xo one, however, 
will be able to deny, that a Protestantism which pro- 
tested against the impure doctrine of Roman Catholicism, 
without being willing to make use of the pure doc- 

i Yerhandhmgen, II. S, 104, ff. 

2 Base, Church History (7th Edition,' S. 623), says :—" Its 
object being- limited, and the actions necessarily monotonous, 
its internal significance is placed in the fact, that it is a sacred 
neutral territory for all the parties of the Evangelical Church, 
which here again represents itself as an united power." 



300 



THE CHURCH RENOVATING- HERSELF. 



trine of the Reformation, was there specially at home. 
Many provincial associations assumed the position of 
standing armies opposed against the Church. The 
association seems now to have the culminating point of 
its power behind it ; very few will still see in it a repre- 
sentation of the Protestant name. What is certain is 
the fact, that it brought substantial help to oppressed 
Protestants scattered in Roman Catholic countries. This 
also may be said in its praise, that by it a religious 
movement has been brought into the educated middle 
class, by means of which many a one may have been led 
farther on. 

The energy with which, in the fifth decade, the ques- 
tion about the Constitution of the Church was agitated, 
was evidently connected with the interest which at that 
time was devoted to the question regarding the political 
Constitution. The representatives of religious Liberalism 
in the Prussian General Synod belonged, in the following 
year, in the first United Prussian Diet, to the opposition. 
The harvest year of such seed was the year 1848. Sepa- 
ration of the Church from the State, equal rights in the 
State for all religions, perfect freedom for every religion 
in the administration of its internal affairs, separation of 
the School from the Church ; — these were the rights and 
liberties which the Francfort Parliament decreed to the 
German people. How is the Protestant Church, with 
which the State refuses to have anything to do, and which 
is not allowed to have anything to do with an atheistic 
State, in future to exist ? — that was the question. Fol- 
lowing the example set by the Preparatory Parliament 
at Francfort, a meeting for consultation was convened at 
Wittemberg. To make up for the support which the 
Church had hitherto found in the State, a Confederation 
of the Established Protestant Churches of Germany was 



CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 301 

proposed ; a Council was to be formed, composed of 
deputies from the Churches of the individual States, and 
the Churches of the individual States were to occupy 
towards the Council the same position as the individual 
States did towards the Imperial Parliament at Francfort. 
Just as, a few years before, Bunsen had beforehand de- 
termined, even to the very details, the constitution of the 
Church of the Future, so, on the foundation of the 
fundamental rights, decreed by the Francfort Parliament, 
— " which would never be forgotten, and even though 
passing away, would form the foundation of the Ger- 
man national law" — Hase presented " the Evangelical 
Protestant Church of the German Empire," ready even 
to the very house in which the Imperial Synod was to 
meet. No notice was taken of these projects by the 
Future. Out of the great Church Union (Kirchenbund), 
arose a moveable conference, called Kirchentag, which 
would hardly have maintained itself, unless it had been 
supported by the cause of the Inner Mission. The first 
Kirclientag at Wittemberg, bound the membership of 
the Constituent Council to the profession of " standing 
on the ground of the Confessions of the Reformation/' — 
a formula with which all the Confessions and view's of 
Protestantism could agree. That for which the Kirchen- 
bund had, at first, been intended, was now claimed by the 
Kirclientag, viz., representation of the essential unity of 
the Evangelical Church, In the Kirchentag at Berlin 
(1853), this essential unity was more distinctly expressed 
by the declaration, that it consisted in the profession of 
the unchanged Augsburg Confession. But when we 
consider that the Reformed, and many adherents of the 
Union did not agree with the Lutheran doctrine of the 
Lord's Supper confessed in the Tenth Article, — that ail 
the adherents of the Union as such could not homologate 



302 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

the sentence, by which this Article condemns the doctrine 
of the Swiss, not to mention that of some of the princi- 
pal speakers of the Conference, it was sufficiently known, 
that they did not stand fast even in the doctrine of 
Justification ; — one could in this act recognize only the 
desire of getting out of the ambiguous nature of the 
Union, and a direction towards the Lutheran doctrine, as 
the only one in accordance with Scripture ! When the 
wild waters of the Revolution had subsided, and the 
German States returned again to the relations which had 
existed previous to March 1848, the former relation of 
the State to the Protestant Church returned, as a matter 
of course, with this difference only, that in some countries 
part of the functions hitherto exercised by the ministry 
for worship was transferred to an Upper Church- Council 
(Oberkirchenrath). Whatever of the Presbyterian Consti- 
tution was tried, would not take root, and proved a failure. 
Synods were no more spoken of; too sad experience had 
been made with such representative assemblies during the 
Revolution. The Unity of "the German Protestant 
Church found, in the meantime, its expression in Confer- 
ences, at Eisenach, of deputies from the highest ecclesi- 
astical authorities. 

The attention which the Eisenach Conference has de- 
voted to the form of public worship, is connected with a 
general want. The understanding of those forms of 
public worship, which Illuminism had not only not under- 
stood, but had, as far as possible, mutilated and set aside, 
had again been opened to the revived historical and reli- 
gious sense. The eye was again opened for the magnifi- 
cent churches of the middle ages, and for the holy forms 
of Christian painting ; the ear, for the wonderful sound 
of the bell, for the solemn sounds of the organ, for the 
sound of all nature in praise of its Creator, for the musi- 



PUBLIC AYORSHTP. 303 

cal creations of men like Bach and Handel. The imi- 
tative creations of our time in church building, church 
painting, and church music, have held up a mirror of 
humility to our modern time, in its proud consciousness 
of progress, and thereby opened up the way for the under- 
standing of the great masters of ancient times, and have 
awakened a sense and a presentiment of the glory of the 
Church. Wherever the Christian life in any way mani- 
fested itself, indignation was expressed at the shocking 
devastation which Illuminism had perpetrated in the 
hymn-books. The knowledge was slowly followed by the 
deed. In the meantime science had time to restore the 
old texts, to investigate the history of the hymns, to bring 
back the old church music, to agree as to principles in 
getting up a collection of hymns. Here also the hymns 
of modern poets were, for the most part, only fitted to 
excite hunger and thirst for the old ones. It was felt how 
great a treasure had been squandered ; and again to col- 
lect and bring into circulation these treasures, has become 
a want generally felt, — the gratification of which the 
Eisenach Conference has considered, and proposed to itself 
as a worthy task. — The interest for the importance, his- 
tory, and character of the Liturgy, was awakened by the 
controversy about the Prussian Liturgy. The Liturgies of 
the ancient Church have been thoroughly studied ; the 
old Protestant ones have been collected and compared. 
Furnished with such means, Hqfling, Kliefoth, Ldhe, 
Petri, and others, have attempted to understand and hold 
up the peculiarity of the old Lutheran form of public 
worship, and, if possible, to bring it into application. 
A reform of public worship, in the sense of the ancient 
order of the Church, has been aimed at and prepared by 
various church authorities, and has also been here and 
there attained. In this historical practical way more has 



304 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

been gained than in the way of general propositions on 
the nature of public worship. — The Pulpit, once the place 
of the strength of Protestantism, in the age of Illuminism 
the place of its debasement, is still the witness of the 
infinite Subjectivism of modern Protestantism ; however 
the essays of the Rationalists and Supernaturalists, and 
rhetorical declamations, are disappearing. The demand 
that the sermon should edify, and be based on the con- 
sciousness of the doctrine of the Church, may be regarded 
as generally admitted ; and we may well say without 
exaggeration, that it is not unbelief, but faith, which 
again nils the churches. The ways, indeed, in which the 
sermon aims at edification, are infinitively different. 
Some, in the way of the Reformed, aim above all to 
impart knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures, 
and to revive an acquaintance with Scripture. It was 
Menken especially, who, with great skill, has renewed the 
homily of the ancient Church. It was hitherto, however, 
only by means of great talents, that this mode of preach- 
ing could be raised ; and these talents have often exercised 
the art of imparting life tu the word of Scripture at the 
expense of that at which they in reality aimed, viz., the 
understanding of Scripture, by offering, instead of a sound 
exposition of Scripture, the gift of transferring into 
Scripture a world of thoughts. The Lutheran congrega- 
tions, according to old tradition, expected of the sermon 
an application of the word of Scripture for doctrine, for 
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, in 
short, for edification. For instruction in the word of 
Scripture, Bible-classes were instituted ; and these, in 
towns as well as in the country, found an enthusiastic 
reception wherever the ministers knew rightly to apply 
the old and new things from the treasure of the Church. 
Besser's Bibelstunden are a richly blessed fruit of this 



THE PULPIT. 305 

effort. The edification, however, which, in the time of 
the transition, when the Christian had still more or less 
of the character of Pietism, was offered by faithful minis- 
ters, had pre-eminently the character of an excitement 
of the religious feelings. Effusions of the heart, truly 
or artfully popular, passionate sermons after the manner 
of the Methodists, ingenious speeches, seasoned with 
materials which excited the nerves, productions of art 
aesthetically composed, — all were employed for this pur- 
pose. The highest in this mode of preaching, working 
upon the feelings, has been accomplished within a few 
years by a youth, prematurely removed — by Hofacker. 
In him, evangelical love, holy earnestness, Christian prac- 
tical wisdom, simplicity and power of style wonderfully 
co-operated. This mode of preaching was of importance 
as long as the object was to break the ground ; but where 
faith had taken root, there could not fail to be awakened 
a desire for a sermon which would exercise a lasting 
influence, beeome flesh and bone, and edify, not the 
individual only, but the Church. It is in this sense that 
the Confessional party (Harms, Rudelbacli, Heirless, 
Lohe, Petri, Kliefoth), have understood and treated the 
sermon. 

In now summing up, we find that in the same period 
when the German mind turned from theory, and pursued 
practical interests, in the Church also the influence of 
theological science gave way more and more to those 
practical efforts which we have just made to pass in 
review before us. The time when practical theologians 
were dependent upon the oracles from the chairs was 
gone; the clergymen professed Christ without waiting for 
any victory which a faithful theology would achieve against 
Strauss; nor did they ask how the controversy against 
Mahler stood when they turned back to the faith of their 

u 



306 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

fathers. And it was only a vain book-theology which 
could lament over such a time. True theological science 
had cause to thank the Lord of the Church, that the 
fruits which the tree of knowledge had refused to yield, 
grew on the tree of life. In this case only some hesitation 
might have arisen, if practical interests had prevented 
the growing up into the unity of the faith and knowledge 
of the Son of God. But it was just on the territory of 
life that, in contradistinction to the unsettled state and 
disunion of Protestant science, the necessity was felt and 
experienced for a Church united and strong in her Con- 
fession. We have seen how the ways of the Foreign and 
Inner Mission, of the cure of souls, of the development 
of the Constitution, and form of worship, all converged in 
the centre of the Church. 

To this centre even the religious errors of the time 
pointed. The time into which the renovation of Protes- 
tantism falls was, for the Roman Church also, a time of 
renovation. In France, the return to the ideals of the 
mediaeval Church was violent and sickly ; it was more 
from within, deeper and more earnest, in Germany. Here 
it was first that Romantic tendency, which pleaded the 
cause of Roman Catholicism, as being the perennial middle 
age. The master of this Roman Romanticism was Gdrres. 
According to the manner of the Romantics, there was in 
him a positive tendency, which, in poetry, sought faith, — 
and in faith, poetry. It was first nourished by the remnants 
of the glory of the Holy Roman Empire of the German 
nation in the countries of the Rhine, his home; then he was, 
at the hand of the Philosophy of nature, led to the myste- 
rious East, and at length, satisfied in the Roman Church. 
But according to the manner of the Romantics, Gorres' 
poetical faith could not blaze up on high, without by irony 
destroying a prosaic world. This ironical tendency had, 



MOVEMENTS OE THE ROMAN CHURCH. 307 

in the years of his violence and ardour, not spared the 
remnants of the mediaeval Church. When the German 
Empire was dissolved, he had his joke with the inventory 
of the ecclesiastical princes, with their electoral hats, 
useful for thick heads. But when he had made the Roman 
Church of the present time the bearer of his positive 
tendency, he gave Protestantism up for food to that nega- 
tive tendency. — Most closely connected with this Romantic 
Romanism is an historical one, which, in Protestantism, 
beholds the revolution, but, in Rome, the legitimate heir 
of the Church of Christ, founded on the rock of Peter, 
This rock of the historical development has drawn emi- 
nent Protestant lawyers and politicians {Holler. Jarcke, 
Phillips, and others) into the bosom of the Roman 
Church, and is still, to not a few Protestants, a stone 
upon which they stumble. To this may be added the 
power of the name, Church, with which Romanism has 
inscribed its house. As once Augustine, after the wander- 
ings of his life, under the crushing feeling of the fragi- 
lity of all human thinking and striving, embraced the 
authority of the visible Church, with the confession : 
*'*' I should not believe the gospel, unless the authority of 
the Catholic Church induced me to do so;" so, on the 
deceitful sea of modern intellectual life, Rome appeared 
to many as the only harbour of truth. Xor did the 
restored Roman Catholicism set up its doctrines without 
a scientific mediation. Hermesianism could safely place 
its philosophical arras by the side of those with which 
Supernaturalism defended its dogmas ; and the philoso- 
phical powers of our theology of mediation are scarcely 
equal to the philosophical means with which G anther. 
Staudenmaier, Sengler, and others supported the Roman 
doctrine. When Holder, after haying gone through the 
school of revived Protestant theology, in his Symbolik, 



308 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

attacked the Protestant doctrine, none of those who, in 
opposition to him, undertook to defend the Protestant 
cause, were a match for him. It was the opposition to 
Protestantism which essentially imparted power to re- 
stored Romanism, whose hearth in Germany was Munich. 
This opposition seemed to assume a serious character, 
when the Prussian Government, by the violent and illegal 
measure of the deposition of the Archbishop of Cologne, 
raised a powerful opposition against itself, not in the 
Church only, but also in the State. "With all the 
strength of his life, which by that event had been 
challenged, Gorres wrote his " Athanasius." Zeo, the 
ablest of those who, on the part of the Protestants, 
came forth to oppose him, felt himself bound to make 
to him a confession of the miserable condition of Pro- 
testantism. i( I confess it to you candidly, I am some- 
times ashamed of being obliged to call myself a Pro- 
testant, when I see how many under this name must 
be taken along who inwardly are not only not in the 
least affected by that which has called our Church into 
existence, — who not only have never, perhaps, in their 
life, received, so as really to understand it, any thing 
of the doctrines for which their fathers sacrificed their 
substance and blood, and for the sake of which they 
transmitted to their sons the name of Protestants : — but 
who have altogether lost, out of their consciences and 
lives, those foundations of Christianity which Rome has 
faithfully held fast up to this day. But what else has 
brought our Protestant world so far down but the circum- 
stance that we want what you have, viz., the discipline 
and strict order of the Church ? The fate of the Protest- 
ant Church is just the opposite of that which you assert of 
the Roman Church, viz., that it has withdrawn from the 
circumference to the centre. The Protestant Church has 



MOVEMENTS OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. 309 

become altogether circumference; for her centre are the 
congregations, while her circumference are the office- 
bearers drawn into the police-state. Everything in our 
Church which can be created or preserved by the State, 
all the police arrangements are in an excellent condition 
— the business and duties of the superintendents, the 
Church-registers, the administration of Church property, 
the ringing at the fixed hours and in fixed peals, etc.. — 
all these are in excellent condition, but the centre has 
been lost ; for the congregation also exists from a police 
point of view only, while, in an evangelical sense, — accord- 
ing to which it should be a closely united community? 
sealed in faith, and in the common enjoyment of the 
sacraments, for mutual moral care, and for the sup- 
port of the poor and weak, — it has long disappeared 
Every community possesses and exercises the right of ex- 
cluding those who openly defy its principles ; but with 
us, Arians, Socinians, and if, for the sake of public de- 
cency, they think it expedient, all indifferent Rational- 
ists, and all Atheists go to the Lord's table. The same 
is done by every notorious impostor, Sabbath-breaker, and 
adulterer, whensoever they choose, without having, by 
any penance and public confession of the sin which they 
have committed against the life of the congregation, asked 
its pardon, and vowed to reform. Shall we love a mother 
who squanders the inheritance of her own children upon 
the filthy children whom the police rake together in the 
streets for her ? " 

These confessions, at that time an abomination to 
theoretical Protestantism, laughed at by haughty Pro- 
testant science, as the utterances of an insignificant party, 
are now-a-days better understood. They indeed contain 
what Protestantism has to learn from the Romish Church, 
and will yet have to learn in many a hard school, unless 



310 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

it take warning. When Prussia had deposed the Arch- 
bishop of Cologne, the liberal mob shouted applause ; 
Rome raised her lamentation, but she went out, upon the 
whole, victorious from the struggle. When in German- 
Catholicism, the revolutionary matter which existed in 
the Church of Rome discharged itself, the Protestant 
mob shouted ; but when, after this wind, the whirlwind 
of the year 1848 was reaped, Protestantism stood there 
broken, while Romanism was powerful in the strength 
of its organization. It is certain that the Roman Church 
assisted in supporting the tottering Prussian State, 
while the evangelical Established Church of Prussia 
regained strength on the soil of the strengthened State 
only. 

But even opposite tendencies exerted an influence upon 
the development of the Church feeling. The liberal and 
rationalistic matter which had accumulated in the Roman 
and Protestant Churches since the age of Illuminism, 
having become bolder by the progress both of faith and 
unbelief, and being borne up by the political opposition, 
attempted the formation of new ecclesiastical communi- 
ties. Thus, there arose the religious societies of the Ger- 
man Catholics, and of the Free Congregations. The cir- 
cumstance that societies, whose Confession in reality con- 
sisted in confessing as little as possible, nevertheless saw 
themselves compelled to set up Confessions, proved the 
necessity of a Confession. And these street-reformers, 
these nonsensical synods, these fabrications of translations 
of the Bible, hymns, etc., — this caricature of the great 
drama of the Reformation, reflected, very much against 
their will, credit on the fathers and masters of our 
Church. 

Of essential influence upon the development of the 
Church-feeling were, finally, the struggles of the Union. 



PRINCIPLE OF CONFESSIONAL THEOLOGY. 311 

In the change of positions which the Union tried, the 
necessity of every single element in the whole of the 
Church was impressed upon the convictions. The Union 
at first tried it with the sentiments of the individual, but 
came to the conviction that a Church cannot be formed 
with mere sentiments. It then made an attempt with 
the form of worship, only to reach the conclusion that 
there is no use in moving the hands of a clock when the 
mainspring of the Confession is broken. It then made 
trial, of a Confession, but brought to light nothing but 
patchwork. It then tried the Constitution, but it will 
speedily come to the conviction, that two independent 
Churches cannot be compelled to wear the same coat. 
The import and meaning of those failures of the Union 
is to make plain what is requisite for the divine work of 
the Church. 



Church-theology is neither a handmaid of the practice 
of the Church, nor an adventurer which intrusts itself at 
random to the high sea of the intellectual life of a time, 
but it is the scientific self-consciousness of a Church. 
The Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church, who 
works the graces of teaching and ruling in the Church, 
works also the grace of knowledge, as well as every other 
grace, for the edification of the Church. The scientific 
self-consciousness of the Church is an independent object ; 
but it cannot fail to become weak when it puts itself in 
opposition to other functions for the edification of the 
body of Christ. That which necessarily constitutes the 
subject-matter of theology, as the scientific self-conscious- 
ness of the Church, is the Confession ; but this is desig- 
nated by our modern theology as unprotestant, unsound, 



312 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

unscientific. It is designated as unprotesfaut ; for "'inas- 
much as Scripture is to Protestantism the sole authority 
for truth, even the doctrinal views of the Reformers can- 
not be set up as arbiters, as is asserted in even the strict- 
est Confession of the Lutherans. " Now, it is certainly un- 
protestant to hold fast any Confession, simply because it 
has from the beginning enjoyed, in the Church, public 
authority as a Confession. But just as it is not only un- 
protestant. but even unchristian, to boast of Scripture as 
the sole source of truth, without drawing any truth from 
Scripture, without knowing and confessing what it teaches 
for salvation, — just as little would Protestantism have any 
claim to be a Church, if the life of its congregations did 
not rest on a firm consciousness of what the word of God 
has revealed for salvation. The j. rdiae 

says : i; And we confess thus also our adherence to the 
same first unchanged Augsburg Confession, not because 
it has been got up by our theologians, but because it has 
been taken from God's word, and has. in it, its good and 
firm foundation.'"'' This conviction the Lutheran Church 
still holds, and her sound theologians know how to estab- 
lish it from Scripture ; yea. even those theologians of the 
Union, who, in the Berlin Kirchentag, professed their ad- 
herence to the Augsburg Confession, bear witness to this 
fact at least, that one may acknowledge Scripture to be 
the sole rule of truth, and yet be in favour of. and adhere 
to, a scriptural Confession of Faith. — It is farther asserted 
that such a return to the creed of our fathers is unsound. 
— an expression of the tendency of our times towards 
restoration: for he who has become acquainted with the 
phenomena of Pietism, of Rationalism, of modern science. 
and, generally, with the intellectual and mental struggles 
of our time, can only by a violent effort put himself back 
to, and feel at home in, a bygone and overcome period of 



PRINCIPLE OF CONFESSIONAL THEOLOGY. 313 

the Church. But this charge would come home to those 
theologians also. who. while themselves taking their stand 
on the Confessions of the Reformation, have declared the 
Augsburg Confession to be the general symbol of the in- 
dividual Protestant Churches confederated, or to be con- 
federated. It is. indeed, a strange aberration to consider 
a return to the positive to be something sound, but an 
earnest and lasting return to the positive to be something 
unsound. These polemics always declaim against those 
who, with a mode of thinking thoroughly modern, rush 
into that which is ancient, simply because it is ancient. 
But of such it will not be possible to point out a single in- 
stance among the theologians of the confessional tendency. 
Most of them have, after many wanderings, been brought 
back to the creed of their fathers by the positive tendency, 
which, as is shown by the mediating theology itself, after 
all, pervades the Church of the present time. They are 
attached to the Confession of their fathers, not because 
it is old, but because it is true and scriptural. As we 
have endeavoured to show, all the signs of the times are 
in favour of that tendency towards the Church. '•' True," 
it is objected, <; but the Church of the Future is not a new 
edition of the Church of the sixteenth century. That 
which has once gone, never comes back. In the Church 
of the Future the great developments of Protestants, since 
er. must be found again preserved and purified. For 
that very reason, the mediating theology, in which these 
elements are preserved, very justly calls itself the Church 
of the Future." But when Ulysses, after twenty years 
struggles and wanderings, returned to his home, he had 
become another man, and his home had become something 
different to him too. Thus, the experience of the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries cannot and must not be lost to 
the Protestant Church ; but it is erroneous, and almost 



314 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

ridiculous to imagine that the systems we have gone 
through must be preserved as elements in the Theology 
of the Future. What theology would that be which 
would, at the same time, be a little Pietistic, a little 
Rationalistic, a little Speculative, a little Mystic, a little 
Confessional, etc. ? The preservation of these systems and 
tendencies must, on the contrary, be sought for subjec- 
tively, in the experience of theologians. A theologian who 
has gone through these schools will look upon the Con- 
fession with a different eye than did the theologians of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Augustine was 
something different to Hugo of St Victor, something dif- 
ferent to Luther, something different to the Jansenists. 
But it is, in general, not the question, whether a system 
and tendency is in harmony with the progress of the time, 
but whether it is true. If it be true, then it is our part 
to follow it; but it is the part of the Lord of the Church 
to make something new to arise in the kingdom of God. — 
But, finally, we are told that it is unscientific to return to 
the orthodoxy of the sixteenth century. But let him who 
asserts that, in the territory of religious development, a 
tendency which has truth on its side, and which promises 
to be the tendency of the future, must always appear in 
the form of science, see how he gets on with the gospel of 
the fishermen and publicans. Our modern theology, 
which is disposed to consider Pietism as a supplement of 
the Reformation, will be obliged to confess that this school 
was, as regards scientific acquirements and profundity, far 
inferior to the orthodox masters of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries . Ldscher alone was, in that point of 
view, worth a w r hole Pietistic theological faculty. And 
many of our modern theologians should not forget the time 
when they, being esteemed as Pietists, appealed not to 
science, but to life only. That which has proved itself in life 



PRINCIPLE OF CONFESSIONAL THEOLOGY. 315 

as a solid reality, will be acknowledged by science also. 
The father of the Rauhe Hans, 1 who always brought for- 
ward and carried out his practical affairs at the expense of 
modern science, obtained the highest honour of theology, 
after he had obtained the good opinion of the public. The 
fame of science follows but too often public opinion, which 
again is a partizan of success. And the Lutheran theo- 
logy can bring forward a line of theological ancestors, of 
whom she need not be ashamed. From the dogmatical 
opinions passed upon the theologians of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, which are still current in many 
theological circles, we may confidently appeal to the more 
thorough studies of the future. But no such warning 
instances from the period of orthodoxy, such as the 
estates possessed by Hoe von Hoenigg, 2 or the many 
wives whom Calovius outlived, are required in order to 
warn the Confessional theology against an unreserved 
alliance with the theology of that period. It is not to the 
theology, but to the Confession of the Lutheran Church 
of the sixteenth century, that the Confessional theology 
wishes to return. And it is not in order to boast, but 
only to give glory to truth, that it may point to scien- 

1 An establishment near Hamburg, founded by Wickern, D.D., 
for the carrying out of the various schemes of the Inner Mis- 
sion, — Tr. 

- Matt. Hoe von Hoenigg, born 1580 at Vienna, died 1645 as 
principal chaplain to the Elector John George I. of Saxony. 
He was distinguished by his violent hatred of the Reformed, 
and had considerable influence upon the events of that time. 
It was at his instigation that John George made, in 1635, the 
peace of Prague which was so injurious to the Evangelists ; and 
he is even charged with having received a bribe from the Em- 
peror for that purpose. There seems, however, not to be any 
other foundation for the latter charge except his wealth, which is 
sufficiently accounted for from his position, and from the circum- 
stance that he was descended from an old noble family.— Tr. 



316 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

tific works to which party spirit and prejudice alone can 
refuse the claim of scientific depth. He who says that he 
cannot learn anything from the biblical investigations of 
Heirless. Delitzscli. Caspari, Keil, Oehler, PhiHppi, Hof- 
mann. Bailing arte a ^ and others., and from the historical 
researches of Rudelbach, Guerieke. Sckmid, Kurt:. Lind- 
ner, and others, and from the doctrinal investigations of 
ThomcLsius, and others, and from the practical investiga- 
tions of Hofiing, Kliefoth, Lohe. Petri, and others, gives 
to himself, from that very circumstance, a testimonium 
pauperiatis. As yet, the Coufessional theology has not 
reached the goal ; but it is exerting itself to reach it. It 
forms part of these efforts to settle with the systems and 
tendencies of the last century, and conscientiously to avail 
itself of the scientific means of the time. 

Let us now take a few glances at the single depart- 
ments of Theology, in order to show more distinctly how 
we understand this. 

Protestantism stands and falls with the principle of the 
sole authority of Scripture ; but this principle is quite 
independent of the doctrine of inspiration, as taught in 
the old systems of divinity ; and it could only be by shut- 
ting our eyes to the truth, that this doctrine could be 
again received in this form. The relation of God the 
Holy Spirit, to the writers of the Books of Scripture 
must, beyond any doubt, be conceived of in a manner 
different from that in which this doctrinal theology con- 
ceived of it, in order to carry through its proposition that 
God is the real author of Scripture. Xo doubt, the tes- 
timony of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who live 
in accordance with Scripture, is to be considered as an 
argument in proof of the divine authority of Holy Scrip- 
ture ; but the testimony of the Church {fides humano.) is 
more closelv connected with this divine foundation of faith 



EXPOSITION OF SCRIPTURE. 317 

{fides divina) than our old systematic Theology admit- 
ted. The very circumstance that the Reformers and 
orthodox leaders of the Church, down to Calovhis, made 
a distinction between the real and principal books of the 
New Testament, and the so-called deutero-canonical, be- 
cause the Ancient Church did not agree as to their recep- 
tion, — this very circumstance proves how decisive is the 
testimony of the Ancient Church in determining what is 
canonical. The most recent criticism, for which the testi- 
mony of the Holy Spirit is a mere phrase, has with a 
vandal-like delight in destruction, endeavoured to break 
in pieces the historical foundations of Holy Scriptures. 
Against such assaults faith had, no doubt, to defend 
the firm citadel of the Church, even to the last stone ; 
but what should not have been done, was to unite the 
means of defence with the citadel itself. Apologetics 
require us not only to speak, but also to be silent. It is 
no disgrace to say : Here is a difficulty which I cannot 
remove, an objection which I cannot refute, a contradic- 
tion which I cannot reconcile. That which every human 
science allows to itself, without losing confidence in itself, 
will surely be permitted to a science which has to deal 
with divine mysteries. We feel constrained to confess 
that, by means of that apologetical versatility, and pre- 
tence of knowing everything, a spirit of untruth has crept 
in among ourselves, which will yet bear its sad fruits. 
As regards the interpretation of Scripture, all centuries 
will be obliged to admit that the Reformers accomplished 
that which was just their mission, i.e., to evolve from 
Scripture the Confession, and to prove that which they 
had evolved. But it was quite natural that the pre- 
eminently doctrinal use which the Reformers and ortho- 
dox divines made of Scripture, prevented them from 
giving its due place to the historical view. Altogether 



318 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

disregarding the gradual growth of the new dispensation 
out of the old one, they proved the specific doctrines of 
Christianity with equal confidence by texts from the Old 
as well as from the New Testament. By those transition- 
systems of the eighteenth centmy, the way was opened up 
for a freer, a more immediate and living exposition. The 
circumstance that Rationalism became the heir of these 
schools cannot prove the soundness of that turn which it 
gave to Scripture exposition, — a turn as unscientific as it 
is unchristian. But with all that, we must not forget the 
fact that, in opposition to the orthodox narrow-mindedness, 
to the ascetic fervour of Pietism, to the unsound strainings 
of the school of Bengel-Crusius, it worked as a purifier of 
the atmosphere, and has led to a more natural and sober 
historical mode of viewing things, which has opened up 
the way for an interpretation which enters into the spirit 
of Scripture more deeply, and yet, at the same time, more 
objectively. A philological school, which proceeded from 
Rationalism, put limits to its arbitrarily extenuating 
Exegesis, inasmuch as, without regard to the use to be 
made of its results, it objectively, by means of classical 
and Oriental Philology, determined what, according to 
the language, context, and history, was the sense. Al- 
though some distinguished representatives of this school 
assigned to themselves the position of vine-dressers, who 
laboured in the vineyard of the Lord, digging, purging, 
cutting, pressing, without enjoying the vine ; yet a more 
living interpretation has reaped the benefit of their 
labours. With the means employed by them, the Ra- 
tionalistic school brought out the meaning of the words ; 
but the duty of a sound Exegesis is to reproduce, out of 
the word, the spirit who has produced the word. The 
words of the Apostle Paul : " Therefore we conclude 
that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of 



EXPOSITION OF SCRIPTURE. 319 

the law" (Rom. iii. 28), are not yet understood, although 
we may understand the meaning of the words, and the 
immediate context; but only when we know the place 
which they occupy in the doctrine of Paul. Thus it was, 
that attempts were made at representing the doctrinal 
systems of John, Paul, Peter, — attempts which found a 
hold only within the historical representations of the 
development of the doctrines of the Old and New Testa- 
ment, which were called sometimes Biblical Theology, 
and sometimes Biblical Dogmatik. The numerous writ- 
ings of this kind have, upon the whole, not been very 
successful, because their authors indeed confessed that 
they were as much as possible free from the prejudice 
that the doctrine of Scripture must agree with the Creed 
of the Church ; but so much the more were they pre- 
possessed with their own doctrinal views, and hence they 
have not attained a purely historical representation. But 
it is, in general, not possible to treat the development of 
the Old and New Testament independently of the deve- 
lopment of the kingdom of God under the Old and New 
Dispensation. There exist important starting points for 
a truly historical exposition of the course of Revelation 
in Scripture ; but much yet requires to be done. Not- 
withstanding all his aberrations in details, Hofmann has 
hitherto accomplished most in this territory. It is not 
only the Protestant Church, but the Church in general 
which stands and falls with the conviction that the same 
Spirit who has revealed himself in the Old and New Tes- 
ments, prevails in her. It is therefore in the spirit of the 
Church that the Scriptures must be interpreted. It was, 
hence, a necessary progress of Exegesis to reduce the 
word of Scripture to the Christian consciousness (Tho- 
lucJc, Olshausen, Stier, and others), how much soever 
that school of Philology declaimed against it with the 



320 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

coarseness of vine dressers (Fritzsche, D. Schulz, and 
others). The mistakes and aberrations of this mode of 
exposition coincide with those of the theology of feeling 
in general, viz., a formless, subjective Christianity. It is 
not the consciousness of this or that individual, but the 
consciousness of the Church which must interpret Scrip- 
ture. Nor has this consciousness been left without wit- 
nesses. The interpreter must go to the work connected 
with the voices of all centuries. Very able investigators 
of Scripture (Bleek, Heirless, Hengstenoerg) have, from 
very different stand-points, co-operated towards this in- 
terpretation in the spirit of the Church. But there 
remains as yet much to be done. 

The Church sees in her Confession the sum of the 
doctrines of the Bible ; and it is the duty of systematic 
theology (Dogmatilc), systematically to represent these 
doctrines. The systematic representation of the Dog- 
matik is, more particularly, argumentative and evolving. 
The Lutheran DogmatiJc proves its contents from the 
formal principle of the sole authority of Scripture ; and 
evolves it from the material principle of Justification by 
faith alone. Following the model of Melanehthori 's Loci — 
an analytical development of the doctrines of Justifica- 
tion on the foundation of the Epistle to the Romans — the 
systems of divinity of the sixteenth century had pre-emi- 
nently the character of statements in accordance with the 
Confessions; and hence the importance of those first 
works on systematic theology lies pre-eminently in the 
supplement which they form to the Confessions. After 
this period, which laid the foundation, and formed the 
materials, came the scholastic period in which the argu- 
mentation pre-eminently appears as Polemics, and the 
evolving as an elaboration and systematic comprehension 
of the ideas. The analytical method, according to which 



DOCTRINAL THEOLOGY. 321 

the materials were systematically formed, and which from 
the object of salvation went back to the subject of salva- 
tion, was not only most insufficient, in a formal point 
of view, — with the last divines of this school, e. g., Hoi- 
laz, it hangs round the materials just like a loose gar- 
ment — but (and this was a very serious affair), dis- 
placed also the material principle of Protestantism from 
the centre, into which it just placed the indefinite idea 
of salvation. One-sided formal development gave way, 
in that time of transition, to the function of proving 
from Scripture ; so that a great portion of the polemi- 
cal, scholastic, and other materials, were now put down 
in the circumference, as historical materials. The school 
of Wolff joined to the proving from Scripture the 
formal demonstration which, as we saw, introduced that 
method which proved by arguments drawn from reason. 
This Dogmatik of transition fell into two directions, the 
supernaturalistic and the rationalistic, both of which 
agree, in point of form, in this, that they do not bring 
into a systematic form, but merely prove, — the former 
from Revelation, the latter from reason ; while both 
occupy, towards the Confession of the Church, more or 
less of an external relation ; so that there are broad 
historical materials running along the properly dogmatical 
ones. From this unscientific path, Dogmatik has been 
freed both by the speculative school, and by the theology 
of the religious consciousness, which centered in Schleier- 
maclier. In both of these schools, the function of evolving 
prevails. The Speculative Dogmatik, supposing a system 
arisen and proved independently of Dogmatik, undertakes 
to evolve the doctrine of the Church, according to its 
method, and to bring it into harmony with its results. 
Although the stand-point of Schleiermacher is widely 
different from this, inasmuch as Schleiermacher has not 



322 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

to do with ideas, but with statements of the Christian 
consciousness ; yet the method of evolving is common to 
both. Now, this is the fundamental error of Schleier- 
macher, that he evolves only, and does not prove. — It is 
now quite obvious what a sound Dogmatik has to accom- 
plish. It has both to prove and to evolve the creed 
which lives in the consciousness of the Evangelical Pro- 
testant Church. It is Scripture alone from which it can 
take its arguments. But this ground, which was undoubt- 
ed and firm for a time, which was rooted and grounded in 
Scripture, must itself be proved to be necessary. Dogmatik 
has to show that Christianity, from its very nature and 
truth, does not admit of any other rule of truth than this : 
Whatever is in accordance with Scripture is true. But 
the argumentation from Scripture must not only be 
exegetically regulated in the details, but also rest on an 
objective, comprehensive view of the course of revelation 
in the old and new dispensation. Hofmann's Schrift- 
beweis (proof from Scripture), however erroneous some of 
its results are, is yet an important contribution towards 
the solution of this problem. It stands differently with 
the attempts to derive from Scripture a system of doc- 
trines, without the mediation of the development of the 
doctrine by the Church ; and among those attempts, 
BecFs Christiiche Lehrwissenscliaft stands foremost. To 
go thus immediately back to Scripture, appears, at 
first sight, as the truly free proceeding, and yet, at the 
same time, truly bound ; in one word, as the truly Pro- 
testant proceeding. But if every Protestant divine were 
to expound Scripture in his own way, were himself to 
form the doctrines, and to shape their building according 
to his own method, — what would be the result ? A chaos 
of stand-points atomistically crossing one another, with 
which no Church, no sound science would be possible. 



DOCTRINAL THEOLOGY. 323 

Behind this apparent objectivity, an unbounded subjec- 
tivity is concealed. Men so rich in intellect and spirit as 
Beck, must not influence the opinion as to what the 
stand-point is in itself. If the Protestant Church calls 
the Scriptures the rule of the doctrines of faith, it does 
not thereby say that Scripture is the source of them. 
Even before the books of the New Testament were written 
and collected, there existed in the congregations a con- 
sciousness of faith. It was founded upon the oral word 
of the Apostles, and very early, according to the Confes- 
sion at Baptism, assumed the form of rules of faith, 
which were regarded as the sum and substance of both 
the oral and written word. The first Dogmatik (Origen 
on the Fundamental Doctrines) proceeds from the rule of 
faith. This rule cf faith is, for the Evangelical Lutheran 
Church, her Confession, of which she is convinced that it 
is at one with the Confession of the Catholic Church, as 
is declared in the Augsburg Confession, at the close, and 
in the formula concordiae, at the commencement. Every 
Dogmatik has anew to compare the doctrine of the Con- 
fessions with the rule and measure of Scripture ; it has 
merely, in a scientific manner, to evolve the Confession, 
but not to produce it from Scripture itself. It may be 
that the argumentation from Scripture comes into con- 
tradiction with the Confession of the Church, inasmuch 
as it is, after all, of human origin. But, without prejudice 
to the rights of Protestantism and science, we may well 
demand from our divines, that they shall not consider their 
own opinion to be infallible, while they assert the fallibility 
of the Church. People have at all times endeavoured to 
remove, by means of Scripture exposition, those doctrines 
which would not agree with reason. The scientific ex- 
position of the doctrines of faith must consider it as its 
task to invalidate the reasons which, from time immemo- 



324 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

rial, have been raised against them by reason. The 
dangers by which Apologetics have all along been beset, 
are Sophistry, Rationalism, Dilettanteism. The apolo- 
gist too easily gets into the position of an advocate who 
wishes, at any cost, to refute his opponent, without 
thoroughly entering into, and sympathising with the 
disposition of mind from which his objections flowed ; and 
yet such would be necessary, if it were only in order to 
discharge his office thoroughly. But of many objections, 
one must candidly confess, that they have forced them- 
selves, not upon the opponent only, but upon the investi- 
gator himself. Now, if a man knows that against deeply 
rooted doubts, even twenty-four arguments, picked up at 
random, are of no avail, how can he imagine thereby to 
silence his opponent ? It is in opposition to such apo- 
logetical mismanagement and levity that the demand has 
been very justly raised, that the arguments for the truth 
of the faith should be evolved from a deeper view. To 
such efforts, however, it easily happens to imagine the 
supports which it raises to be absolute arguments and 
proofs. We have seen in what manner the Wolffians 
pretended to demonstrate the Trinity. Is there any one 
who does not now smile at such a demonstration ? Never- 
theless, of late, people of a friendly disposition towards 
the Church again begin to speak of the Trinity in such a 
manner, as if he who has conceived of the idea of God 
must spontaneously fall upon it. Is true science then 
really benefited by the much boasted proofs from astro- 
nomy, geology, chemistry, magnetism, etc., in which 
people, in more recent times, enjoy themselves ? Hand 
in hand with the superficial many-sidedness and versa- 
tility of our science, there goes a want of common sense, of 
a perception of truth, of logical power, of originality of 
conception, and of pith in the style, which is surely one 



DOCTRINAL THEOLOGY. 325 

of the dark signs of the times. Our literature is entering 
upon the Alexandrian epoch. 

The second function of Dogmatih is evolving. The 
doctrines of faith are the products of a long evolution. 
To represent the origin, formation, scientific mediation of 
the history of doctrines, is the task of the History of 
Doctrines. This science has of late been advanced, less 
by compendia, than by thorough special investigations. 
Its results are, in their principal elements, appropriated 
by Dogmatih. The confessional relation of the doctrine 
of faith is brought out by Sj/mbolih, which, without losing 
historical objectivity, has been freed from the ambiguity of 
Planch's indifFerentism by Marheiniche, Mahler, Guericke, 
Kbllner. If, then, even in the History of Doctrines, and 
in Sj/mbolik, it is impossible to represent, without the 
writer's judging and deciding at all, such a purely his- 
torical proceeding is certainly inadmissible in Dogmatih, 
inasmuch as its task is both to prove and evolve. It has 
to follow up the historical development given in the His- 
tory of Doctrines by the development of their notion. In 
this, the Scholasticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries have manifested a skill which will for ever stand 
out as a model, and the results of which no true Dogmatih 
can warrantably neglect. The study of Dogmatih has 
been truly and permanently promoted by the circum- 
stance that De Wette, Hase, Schmicl, Schweizer, Schneck- 
enburger, and others, have directed the looks of a time, 
yet so little schooled in its doctrinal notions, to the won- 
derful structure of this old Dogmatih. It cannot, of 
course, be the aim of our Dogmatih to return to all 
the definitions and notions of that Scholasticism ; but 
these faithful labourers have acquired the right to de- 
mand that every Protestant divine should go through 
their school, and that their definitions should remain 



326 THE CHURCH RENOVATING HERSELF. 

the foundation of every Dogmatih. The systematic de- 
velopment must rest on the foundation of a structure 
reared according to principles ; and it is just by this that 
Dogmatih proves itself to be a science. This principle 
needs not first to be sought for, but is assigned to Dog- 
matih by the Confession, in the doctrine of Justification 
by faith. It is by this doctrine that to everything else 
its place is assigned. The man who, by faith, lays hold 
of the merit of Jesus Christ, is justified by God. In this, 
three things are implied, — the faith, the object of faith, 
and the effect of faith. The object of faith is the reve- 
lation of God in Christ Jesus ; faith is the fruit of rege- 
neration which the Spirit of Christ works by the means of 
grace ; justification is the judicial union of man with God, 
which, by and through sanctification, becomes a union of 
eternal life with God in the heavenly Church, the goal of 
the Church Militant. But in whatever way we may pro- 
ceed as to the method, at all events, as long as the doc- 
trine of Justification by faith is acknowledged as the 
material principle of Protestantism, it must, in Dogmatik 
also, hold its position as a principle. But, in the latest 
works on Dogmatik (Martensen, Lange, Ebrard), not 
even an attempt is made. As in the History of Doc- 
trines, so in the Dogmatih of our time also, the most 
successful labours are not to be sought for in Compen- 
diums, but in Monographs^ The study of Dogmatik will, 
in all probability, not for a long time produce any com- 
prehensive representations of that importance which 
Gerhard, Quenstedt, Calovius, Hollaz had in the seven- 
teenth century. 

On the study of Church History, as we already pointed 
out, the historical spirit, after the liberation-wars, has 
exercised a considerable influence. While the period of 
Illuminism had been satisfied with the one-sided demand 



CHURCH HISTORY. 327 

of a critical, pragmatical treatment, according to the 
sources, this historical spirit added the demand that the 
historian should enter more deeply into the life pervading 
the Church. Even historians like Gieseler, who still 
stood in the service of Tlluminism, could not refuse to 
render obedience to this claim. Here also — and we only 
mention Neander — it was, in the first instance, a subjec- 
tive Christian spirit who, with cordial sympathy, entered 
into the phenomena of the past life of the Church. In 
opposition, however, to the narrowness which attached to 
this stand-point, freer and wider stand-points, like that of 
Hase, had a relative right. The spirit of historical re- 
presentation which alone corresponds to the history of the 
Church, is to feel as a Churchman. But since there does 
not exist a Catholic Church, but only particular Churches, 
the historian who feels this, who has that spirit, will 
not be able to deny the peculiarities of his particular 
Church. There needs not, however, to be any fear that the 
Lutheran Church-historians will return to the stand- 
point of the Magdeburg Centuriators. The period which 
we have reviewed has, among other things, also made 
provision that such nmy not be the case. 

The Confessions again stand arrayed against one an- 
other. They who see nothing but mischief in this may 
well ask themselves whether they seek what is divine, or 
what is human. Many impure elements are mixed up 
with this struggle, but it would be against truth to deny 
that an earnest striving after the victory of truth mani- 
fests itself in it. And how can the sad discord of the 
individual Churches ever be removed, unless that which 
separates them be again made the subject of earnest in- 
quiry? But wherever there is inquiry, there is, in the 
sublunary world, fighting also. Certain it is, that the 
Evangelical Lutheran Church cannot adopt the Tridentine 



328 THE CHURCH RENOVATING- HERSELF. 

conclusions, nor can she adopt the Reformed Confession, 
both on account of the distinctive doctrines, and on ac- 
count of the position which the Confession there occupies. 
The watchword of our Church, in this struggle, can only 
he : " Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take 
thy crown ." Our crown is our Confession. 



INDEX. 



Ammon, 190, 226. 

Bacon, 31. 
Bahrdt, C. F., 130. 
Basedow, 46. 
Baumgarten, 115, 117. 
Bayle, 27, 35. 
Beck, 322. 
Becker, 50. 
Bengel, 103, 105. 
Bruno Bauer, 250. 
Bunsen's Church of the Future, 
301. 

Carpov, 117. 
Cazotte, 63. 

Church Constitution, 297. 
Church History, 327. 
Classical Studies, 52. 
Claudius, 74, 85. 
Claudius on Lessing, 164. 
Confessional Theology, 311. 
Crusius, 107, 119. 
Cure of Souls, 295. 

Darges, 115. 

Daub, 243. 

Deism, 31, 61. 

Descartes, 23. 

De Wette, 231, 

De Wette on Reinhard's Ethics, 

187 
Dinter, 185. 
Dippel, J. C, 126. 
Dogmatik, 320. 

Edeimann, 127. 
English Deism, 31. 
Ernesti, 119. 
Eylert, 268. 

Frederick William L, 42. 
Frederick William II., 43, 60, 

222. 
Frederick William III., 263. 



French Deism, 33. 
Freemasonry, do. 
Fichte, 93, 193, 215. 
Francke, 102. 
Friends of Light, 284. 

Gallitzin, Princess, 87. 
German Literature, 69. 
Gieseler, 327. 
Goethe, 72. 
Gorres, 306. 
Goschel, 249. 
Goze, 155. 

Gustavus Adolphus Association, 
299. 

Hahn, 268. 
Hamanu, 48, 80, 166. 
Harms, 223. 
Hase, 236, 301, 327. 
Hegel, 196, 244. 
Hengstenberg, 274. 
Henke, 177. 

Herbert of Cherbury, 32. 
Herder, 166. 
Hinrichs, 247. 
Historical School, 117. 

Restoration, 222. 

Renovation, 220. 
Hofmann, 322. 
Hoilaz, 117. 
Humanism, 46, 61. 
Hume, 31. 
Huschke, 269. 

Hluminism, 19. 
Illuminati, 59. 
Inner Mission, 290. 

Jacobi, 157, 165. 
Jean Paul, 78. 
Jesuitism, 60. 

Kant, 88, 165, 167, 193. 

Kellner, 268. 



330 



INDEX. 



Kiesevretter, 92. 
Kirchentag, 293. 
Klopstock, 76. 
Knuzen, Matthew, 125. 
Krug, 92. 

Lange, 111, 260. 
Lavater, 82. 
Leibnitz, 25. 
Lessing, 69, 145, 151. 
Liberalism, 284. 
Literati. 288. 

Liturgy of the Court, 267. 
Locke, 31. 

Marheinieke, 2-47. 

Mediating Theology, 229. ! 

Mendelssohn. 30, 161. 

Michaelis, J. D., 120. 

Missions, rise of, 277. 

Moral and Religious condition of 

Germany at present time, 251. 
Moral Renovation, 219. 
Moravians, 277. 
Moras, 120. 
Moras on the Doctrine of the 

Trinity, etc., 186. 
Mosheim, US. 

Napoleon. 67. 
Neander, 272, 327. 
Nicolai, 44. 
Nitzsch, 257. 

Oetinger, 107. 
Olshausen, 26S. 

Pastoral Assistant Society, 297. 
Paulus, 171. 
Pestalozzi, 216. 
Pfaff, 117. 
Philanthropina, 47. 
Philosophy. 21. 
Pietism, 98. 
Planck, 176. 
Popular Philosophy, 29. 
Proletaries, 287. 

Protestantism and Modern Philo- 
sophy, 21. 
Public 'Worship, 303. 
Pulpit, the, 305. 

Rationalism, 168. 



Rationalism in the Pulpit, 183. 
| Rationalism, explanation of the 
Resurrection, Justification, the 
Lord's Supper, Immortality of 
the Soul. 18L 

Reimarus, 145. 

Reinhard, 187. 

Reinhold, 92. 

Religion, 78. 

Religious Condition of Germany 
at present time, 251. 

Revolution. Influence of, 64. 

Richter, 249. 

Roman Catholic Church. Move- 
ments of, 307. 

Romanticism in Roman Church, 
3< 6. 

Romantic School, 201. 

Rothe. 16a 

Rousseau, 34, 62. 

Scheibel, 265. 
Scheming. 193, 253. 

v. 72. 
Schleiermacher, 202, 226. 
Schnlz, David, I 
Scriptural Exposition, 317. 
Semi-Wolffians, 115. 
Semler, 122. 
Sentimentahsm, 73. 
Spalding, 51. 
Spener. 98. 
Spinoza, .3. 
Spinozism, 157. 
Steffens, 266L 
Stilling, 82. 
Strauss. 249. 

Subjectivism, 88. 

Supernaturalism, 1S6. 
Swedenborg, 109. 

Teller, 45. 

The German Union, 144. 
Theology of Illuminism, 96. 
Thesis of Harms, 223. 
Thesis of Luther. 223. 

k, 271, 274. 
Tholnck on Semler. 123. 
Tieck. 20a 
Tollner, 116. 117. 
Twesten. 257. 
Tzschirner, 188, 190. 



INDEX. 



331 



Ullmann, 258. 
Union in Prussia, 227. 
Union of the Lutheran and Re- 
formed Churches, 262. 
Utilitarianism, 49. 

Walch, 118. 

Weishaupt, 58. 

"Wetstein, 54. 

Wetstein's New Testament, 119. 

Wichern, 291. 



Wieland, 69. 

Wolfenbiittel Fragments, 147. 

Wolff, 28, 110. 

Virtue, 75. 
Voltaire, 39. 
Voss, 79. 

Ziegenbalg, 277. 
Zinzendorf, 100, 103. 



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